Designing consumer health IT to enhance usability among different racial and ethnic groups within the United States
Racial and ethnic healthcare disparities remain after differences in income, access, and insurance status have been considered, partly because of the healthcare delivery systems failure to respond to cultural differences. The Institute of Medicine has called for the development and deployment of culturally appropriate healthcare services to mitigate these disparities. This complex problem of determining how to address the cultural components of racial and ethnic healthcare disparities is an example of what Russell Ackoff terms messes. Given consumer health information technology (IT)s increasing role in patients self-care and self-management, one potential solution lies in designing consumer health IT that is culturally-informed. Although both the healthcare informatics community and the engineering design community have begun to seriously consider the role of culture in design to enhance usability, much work remains. Unfortunately, creating culturally-informed consumer health IT can seem daunting, limiting designers efforts. We propose the Culturally-Informed Design Framework as a guide for designers of consumer health IT. Designers may use this framework to conceptualize four dimensions of a consumer health IT  technology platform, functionality, content, user interfacein which design choices should be informed by a deep understanding of the users culture.
ethnicity disparities culture health information technology self-care engineering design consumer health informatics self-management cultural ergonomics