Patient Engagement Sounding Loud and Clear at HIMSS15 - Postscript

From HIMSS

Ricky Bloomfield at HIMSS15
This video interview with Dr. Bloomfield from Duke Innovation talks about how his team jumped on the availability of Apple's Healthkit to develop apps to improve patients' health and prevent readmissions. Duke is an up and coming innovator in mobile health, worth keeping on an eye on their developments.

Active Patient Engagement: mHealth as a Tool for Interaction
Slides from one of many presentations at the conference, this one from Geisigner. Their emphasis on clearly defined objectives includes: understand my health, manage my stay/visit, control my condition - a real patient-centered approach.

Empowering Patients Enabled through Personal Health IT
Another excellent presentation on patient engagement from the conference. Some key ideas: nearly every person wants to share in healthcare decision making, retail health is an upcoming trend and patient influencers lead online communities.

Blogs, White Papers, Journals

HIMSS15: IT Enabling Health/Care Where People Live, Work and Play
Jane Sarasohn-Kahn reviews the patient-centered approach of many vendors seen at HIMSS from Walgreens to Practice Fusion and IBM. She notes this as a significant shift from a focus on just providers and the growth of consumerism in healthcare.

Blocking of health information undermines health system interoperability and delivery reform
This ONC blog post by Karen DeSalvo and Jodi Daniels reviews their testimony before Congress on data blocking. This is a significant risk for the continuity of patient care. The free and secure flow of healthcare data is key to caring for patients.

The controversial, uncertain future of the healthcare 'consumer'—and why it matters
Related to the post above, this is one of the more thorough discussions of patient vs. consumer debate in healthcare. Consumers want convenience which some, like retail pharmacies and doc-in-a-box provide for routine services. But in the case of a series diagnosis, the patient role takes dominance in the sense of wanting a relationship with a trusted physician. While the patient may want more of a shared decision making approach, the relationship and guidance are key.

Last Chance for Meaningful Use
From The Healthcare Blog, authored by Ardrian Gropper, MD, this post takes a view of Meaningful Use on the downturn. True that the incentives are a thing of the past but he does make good points about the problems with patient engagement provisions. He points out that View/Download/Transmit as a requirement for patient access of their medical records always made transmit an "or" and is rarely used (the exception may be the VA). His conclusion makes a strong case: "It’s time for ONC to follow its own JASON Task Force report and make all of us as patients first class citizens in Meaningfu Use before it’s too late."