The Role of Patient-facing Technologies to Empower Patients and Improve Safety
Health information technology has become a potential steppingstone to improve informed patient autonomy with one’s own healthcare treatment. Patient-facing technology like online portals and mobile applications aid in this process by providing people easier access to health records, provider selection, and health care management. With this technology, people no longer need to go into clinical settings or contact their providers to take ownership over their medical care. This information can be accessed at any time, with some platforms even allowing direct communication with their care team.
As a result, patients are able to feel more empowered and trusting of the care they are receiving due to increased transparency and managed expectations. While promising, there are still considerations with the current models. This technology cannot replace good care, it is a tool to help enhance it. Patient and provider awareness and literacy of the technology must also exist. Along with this, people have to be willing to use the technology, with some of the existing models not being secure. This could be an interesting opportunity to further explore, especially with this not being the first time seeing the importance of informed patient care and the communication loop between provider and patient.
Patient-centered care and patient engagement have become central components of the modern clinical encounter. The National Academy of Medicine defines patient-centered care as "care that is respectful of and responsive to individual patient preferences, needs, and values, and ensuring that patient values guide all clinical decisions."
While the treatment for each individual is highly tailored and variable, understanding what choices and information are universally important to people, in regard to their healthcare, is very important.
Information technology must also enable patient engagement across the continuum of care, so that the same level of attention toward preventing adverse events is paid to understanding and addressing patients' preferences, needs, and values. For example, the growing demand for improved and more efficient communication between health care providers and patients has created an impetus to harness patient-facing technologies and consumer e-health tools to promote patient engagement and empowerment.
While technology holds immense promise to help improve patient safety and outcomes, it can only serve as an enabler for better care, rather than supplant the processes and people that deliver and receive it.
Our recent study of key figures from leading US health systems, policymakers, and vendors found that success of health IT in general and new predictive analytics tools in particular depends less on the tools themselves than on getting buy-in at all levels from the start.(11) Therefore, technology's next frontier in improving patient safety and quality of care is engaging the people that deliver and receive it.
For a solution to be successful, people must be willing to use it. An important aspect of this is engaging the users with the product, service, or system. This needs to be done so in a way that highlights its purpose, use-cases, and functionality.
Some of the challenges to patient adoption of health IT could be related to lack of patient awareness, limited health literacy, lower socioeconomic status, older age, inadequate computer skills, and unmet technical support needs.
Understanding and testing user behavior will be very important. Principles of human psychology and graphic design will also be very helpful to understand in this area.
Another challenge is related to patient-facing mobile health applications (mHealth apps). While the number of available smartphones and mHealth apps has grown substantially, research suggest that few apps address the needs of the patients who could benefit the most, and many of the apps are not safe or secure.
What are the methods used and the users tested to understand people’s needs, if this research was done at all? What are the pitfalls and what could be improved?
Patient-facing technology has the potential to improve quality and safety by enabling patients to take a more active role in their care. By maintaining focus on the people as much as the processes, technology will boost the progression toward patient-centered care—where patient preferences, needs, and values are emphasized as much as efforts to prevent adverse events.
Reference
Rozenblum, R., & Bates, D. W. (2017, November 1). The Role of Patient-facing Technologies to Empower Patients and Improve Safety. PS Net. https://psnet.ahrq.gov/perspective/role-patient-facing-technologies-empower-patients-and-improve-safety
No generative AI was used in the writing of this post
