An evaluation of the use of NHS touch‐screen health kiosks: a national study

Abstract

Provides the first exploratory analysis of the use of NHS touch‐screen information kiosks located throughout the UK. It examines, through a one month snapshot of the transactional logs of the kiosks, their use and makes comparisons between the types of organisation in which the kiosks are housed. Details of over 120 kiosks and nearly 47,000 user sessions and 310,000 page views were used for the comparison. The kiosks are proving popular, although some use appears to be of a cursory and seemingly unproductive kind. Surprisingly significant differences between kiosk locations were found. This early research reported here is part of an ongoing study of how users obtain health information by interacting with different digital platforms: kiosks, the Internet, and digital television. Comparisons are made between the results of this study and a similar study conducted by the authors on commercial health kiosks, those of InTouch With Health.