Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Patient Preferences For Authentication And Security: A Comparison Study Of Younger And Older Patients, Ann Fruhling, Devika Ramachandran, Tamara Bernard, Ryan Schuetzler, John R. Windle

Interdisciplinary Informatics Faculty Publications

We examine authentication and security preferences of younger versus older patients in the healthcare domain. Previous research has investigated users' perception of the acceptability of various forms of authentication in nonhealthcare domains, but not patients’ preferences. First, we developed an interactive prototype to test three authentication methods: passwords, pattern, and voice. Our results indicate that younger patients prefer passwords by a significant margin. Older patients indicated more mixed preferences. In addition, we evaluated the level of security patients desired for protection of health information compared to financial information. We found no difference based on age: both groups felt financial security …