Personal health data:accessibility and value in a Danish context

Abstract

Abstract The rapidly-evolving digital life of individuals has led to an increasing amount of personal health data (PHD) that are stored across various databases. This study aims to examine challenges encountered by healthy participants while accessing their PHD and to discuss how this knowledge can be used for the creation of future healthcare services. The participants were tasked to find and access their PHD. Thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews and journaling were the methodologies to examine participants’ experience of accessing their PHD, and the perceived value of data. Our findings point out that the participants felt that PHD are accessible through services, nevertheless accessing of PHD were found to be a laborious task. Participants were disappointed by the experience of using various interfaces of the services. The perceived value of PHD was found to be dependent on the usability and personalisation features of the services, rather than on the data itself