Patients reveal willingness to trade hands-on medical care for computer consultations
May 18, 2009As President Barack Obama calls for streamlining heath care by fully converting to electronic medical records and as Congress prepares to debate issues of patient privacy, one question has largely gone unasked: What do patients want?
A qualitative study led by a research team at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) helps answer that question. Reported in the June 2009 issue of the Journal of General Internal Medicine (JGIM), the findings provide key insights into consumer preferences, suggesting that patients want full access to all of their medical records, are willing to make some privacy concessions in the interest of making their medical records completely transparent, and that, going forward, fully expect that computers will play a major role in their medical care, even substituting for face-to-face doctor visits.
"We set out to study patient attitudes toward electronic personal health records and other emerging and future electronic health information technologies," explains the study's lead author Jan Walker, RN, MBA, Instructor in Medicine in the Division of General Medicine and Primary Care at BIDMC and Harvard Medical School. "And we learned that, for the most part, patients are very comfortable with the idea of computers playing a central role in their care." In fact, she adds, patients said they not only want computers to bring them customized medical information, they fully expect that in the future they will be able to rely on electronic technology for many routine medical issues.
"Patients know how busy their doctors are and they want to reserve us for what they really need us for - treating serious illness and conditions," adds senior author Tom Delbanco, MD, the Richard and Florence Koplow-James Tullis Professor of General Medicine and Primary Care at Harvard Medical School and BIDMC. "They may be more than happy to rely on computer protocols and 'faceless doctors' to help them manage garden-variety medical problems."
Focus groups were held in four cities: Boston, MA; Portland, ME; Tampa, FL; and Denver, CO. The locations were selected to represent various geographic areas, to include both rural and urban populations and to incorporate ethnic and cultural diversity. Six of the eight groups (consisting of nine to 12 participants each) were made up of consumers. The last two groups were made up of health care professionals from Boston and Denver, assembled to provide their perspectives on the role of health information technology and to compare their opinions with those of consumers. In each case, participants were asked how they currently organize the information they need to manage their health and medical care, and explored how they would ideally like to manage and use this information, including how technologies could address any gaps.
"The discussions showed that, for the most part, consumers want computers to take into account their personal profiles in order to bring them customized information and advice," explains Walker. "They also expect that technologies will 'watch' over them, monitoring their health and giving them real-time feedback, including communicating with clinicians when needed. Participants also said they expect computers to act as 'personal coaches,' and to foster self care."
Strikingly, she adds, privacy of health care information was of less importance to the groups than might be expected. "It seems that as the population ages and finds itself facing more illness and serious medical conditions, privacy of health information becomes much less important to patients than it is when they are healthy," she notes. "Patients are willing to trade some privacy in order to have records fully available in emergency settings and available to new caregivers as well as to multiple clinicians."
New health technologies offer patients online access to parts of electronic medical records (EMRs), options for maintaining their personal histories, and support for day-to-day management of chronic illness, the authors note. But when it comes to the future design and utility of these and other elements of care, teams of software engineers, graphic artists and clinicians rarely solicit patient perspectives.
"The patient's view is critical," adds Delbanco. "We health care professionals think we know what it is, but we're often too arrogant to ask. We want our healthcare system to be as patient-centered as possible, and patients have broad and deep experience with technology in other sectors of their lives."
Adds Stephen Downs, assistant vice president of the health group at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation which supported this research through a grant from its Pioneer Portfolio, "Year after year, people have seen information technology transform one industry after another and, more to the point, transform their everyday experiences. This is the age of the iPhone, Facebook and Google Maps, yet health care feels very much the same. This study suggests that people are ready for change - they want a modern health care experience." The Pioneer Portfolio supports innovative ideas that may lead to significant breakthroughs in the future of health and health care.
Source: Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
-
Nation's only citywide electronic health information exchange: Improving health and lowering costs
Oct 15, 2008 |
not rated yet |
0
-
Google lets patients share health records
Mar 05, 2009 |
not rated yet |
0
-
Barriers to adoption of electronic personal health records outlined
Mar 10, 2009 |
not rated yet |
0
-
Study finds creating unique health ID numbers would improve health care quality, efficiency
Oct 20, 2008 |
not rated yet |
0
-
Impact of electronic personal health record on hypertension under study
Feb 06, 2008 |
not rated yet |
0
-
Fast photon control brings quantum photonic technologies closer
10 hours ago |
5 / 5 (4) |
0
-
Engineers build first sub-10-nm carbon nanotube transistor
Feb 01, 2012 |
4.9 / 5 (33) |
30
-
Something old, something new: Evolution and the structural divergence of duplicate genes
Jan 31, 2012 |
4.6 / 5 (7) |
1
-
The hidden nanoworld of ice crystals: Revealing the dynamic behavior of quasi-liquid layers
Jan 30, 2012 |
5 / 5 (5) |
1
-
Stock market network reveals investor clustering
Jan 27, 2012 |
3.9 / 5 (23) |
8
-
Classical and Quantum Mechanics via Lie algebras
Apr 15, 2011
- More from Physics Forums - Independent Research
More news stories
Discovery paves way for salmonella vaccine
(Medical Xpress) -- An international research team led by a University of California, Davis, immunologist has taken an important step toward an effective vaccine against salmonella, a group of increasingly antibiotic-resistant ...
12 minutes ago |
5 / 5 (2) |
0
|
First-of-its-kind stem cell study re-grows healthy heart muscle in heart attack patients
Results from a Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute clinical trial show that treating heart attack patients with an infusion of their own heart-derived cells helps damaged hearts re-grow healthy muscle.
Medicine & Health / Cardiology
18 minutes ago |
5 / 5 (1) |
0
|
Ovarian cancer arises in fallopian tube of knockout mice
(Medical Xpress) -- The most deadly form of "ovarian" cancer arises in the fallopian tubes not the ovaries of knockout mice that lack two genes associated with the disease, said researchers led by Baylor College ...
13 minutes ago |
not rated yet |
0
|
Smoking bans lead to less, not more, smoking at home: study
Smoking bans in public/workplaces don't drive smokers to light up more at home, suggests a study of four European countries with smoke free legislation, published online in Tobacco Control.
18 minutes ago |
not rated yet |
0
UK cases of progressive sight loss condition set to rise a third by 2020
New cases of the progressive sight loss condition, known as age-related macular degeneration, or AMD for short, are set to rise by a third in the UK over the next decade, reveals research published online in the British Jo ...
17 minutes ago |
not rated yet |
0
Scientists discover reason for Mt. Hood's non-explosive nature
(PhysOrg.com) -- For a half-million years, Mount Hood has towered over the landscape, but unlike some of its cousins in Oregons Cascade Mountains and many other volcanoes around the Pacific Rim ...
Time of year important in projections of climate change effects on ecosystems
(PhysOrg.com) -- Does it matter whether long periods of hot weather, such as last year's heat wave that gripped the U.S. Midwest, happen in June or July, August or September?
Medical school link to wide variations in pass rate for specialist exam
Wide variations in doctors' pass rates, for a professional exam that is essential for one type of specialty training, seem to be linked to the particular medical school where the student graduated, indicates research published ...
Missing dark matter located: Intergalactic space is filled with dark matter
Researchers at the University of Tokyos Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (IPMU) and Nagoya University used large-scale computer simulations and recent observational data of gravitational ...
Plants use circadian rhythms to prepare for battle with insects
In a study of the molecular underpinnings of plants' pest resistance, Rice University biologists have shown that plants both anticipate daytime raids by hungry insects and make sophisticated preparations to ...
Sensing self and non-self: New research into immune tolerance
At the most basic level, the immune system must distinguish self from non-self, that is, it must discriminate between the molecular signatures of invading pathogens (non-self antigens) and cellular constituents that usually ...