International Journal of Technology Diffusion, 3(4), 29-35, October-December 2012 29
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ABSTRACT
Usability is defned as the easiness with which a system is used by end users to achieve their goals. This important
attribute helps end users to effectively use the software systems. Usability has become vital because end users
of software systems are quite varied in their technology skills. Similarly, usability of websites is also becoming
more important. In today’s world when people hardly get time to visit a doctor, hospitals can facilitate them
by making online appointments and discuss their health issues with the doctors via internet. This paper has
conducted a survey on some of the hospital websites of Pakistan and has provided some suggestions about
how these hospitals can improve their online services by increasing the usability aspects of their websites.
Usability Evaluation of Hospital
Websites in Pakistan
Saqib Saeed, Department of Computer Science, Bahria University, Islamabad, Pakistan
Iram Jamshaid, Department of Computer Science, Bahria University, Islamabad, Pakistan
Saira Sikander, Department of Computer Science, Bahria University, Islamabad, Pakistan
Keywords: Digital Divide, E-Government Adoption, Homeland Security, Technology Adoption, Usability
1. INTRODUCTION
Health is an important asset for any individual.
That is why every government specifically fo-
cuses on providing health care facilities to its
citizens. Over the period it has been observed
that government sector alone cannot meet the
demands of rising number of patients. As a
result number of private hospitals and clinics
increased. This resulted in better services for
citizens. Modern information and communica-
tion technologies (ICTs) have huge potential for
improving the services in health sector.
A number of researchers have focused on
health sector organizations to improve their
working (cf. Shekelle et al., 2001; Steiner et
al., 2001; Burke &Menachemi, 2004; Men-
achemi et al., 2006; Wu et al., 2006; Appari
& Johnson, 2010; Khan, 2011). Mukherjee &
McGinnis (2007) highlighted the importance
of new technologies to improve the services
of healthcare providers. Bodkin & Miaoulis
(2007) concluded that people now expect good
and timely information and hospitals have
realized this but still they need to pay more at-
tention on improving their ICT infrastructures.
ICT research in hospitals focuses in different
directions such as management of patient data
(cf. Schmidt et al., 2007), information manage-
ment (Gaynes & Solomon, 1996), improved
examination facilities (cf. Pelizzari et al., 1989;
Charron et al., 2000; Leroy et al., 2004) asf. In
DOI: 10.4018/jtd.2012100103