Patient Engagement

The Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust, a Global Digital Exemplar in the UK, uses EMRAM as a benchmarking tool to help drive its digital transformation strategy and improve patient outcomes.

HIMSS TV will be live broadcasting from the HIMSS & Health 2.0 European Conference in Helsinki June 12-13. Tune in to HIMSS.tv for in-depth interviews with the movers and shakers in digital health.

Precision medicine and clinical trial matching specialist Massive Bio is partnering with the initiative. Massive Bio’s precision medicine approach is based on a genetic understanding of the patient, allowing doctors to better select treatments most likely to help those patients.

Moreover, the majority of respondents to a new survey had never encouraged patients to leave online feedback in the first place, although feedback on reviews or ratings sites was seen as more useful than social media feedback to help improve services.

A key to reducing misunderstandings between patient and provider is to make sure that clinical content is consistent across the entire continuum, says Wolters Kluwer Health's Pam Holt.

The technology can support Borrego in more than 22 languages. More than 15,000 patients who were not engaging in their health received care from these new efforts involving outreach programs via the technology.

Charles Roussel, CEO of Reflective Strategies, says hospitals are responding "remarkably well" to bringing ideas such as meditation and financial discussions into the patient journey when people feel vulnerable and scared.

In New Zealand, fourteen percent of general practicioners with a portal are offering patients online access to their medical notes. Latest figures from the Ministry of Health show that 610 practices out of 970 across the country offer a patient portal. Of those, 86 practices offer Open Notes, up from just 50 in the first quarter of 2017–2018. Ministry of Health chief medical officer Andrew Simpson says the Ministry encourages general practices to give patients access to their clinical notes. “Having access to their health information empowers people to be more involved in their healthcare,” he said. “On a practical level portals can help them understand their health condition better, and remind them of their care plan and their medications.” The Ministry figures show that four PHOs have all practices offering a portal and around 800,000 people are registered with a patient portal across the country. Twenty-one practices now also offer video-conference consults. “Primary health organisations are starting to see that patient portals are enabling practices to remain sustainable by doing more consultations online, leaving face-to-face consultations for those people who really needed them,” said Simpson. Bryan MacLeod is GP owner of a rural practice, the Coromandel Family Health Centre, and has been offering patients online access to their medical notes for about five years. MacLeod believes that by giving patients access to their medical notes, they are more informed about their care and can share this information with family members or other health professionals if they wish. “The more open we are about what we do and share information that belongs to the patient the better,” he said. “I haven’t seen a downside to it.” MacLeod is keen to start offering video consults and is considering having a separate room set up at the practice for this purpose, but believes the greatest value will be in connecting patients from his practice with tertiary care services. Broadcaster Toni Street has used a patient portal for the past three years and finds it hugely helpful in managing her autoimmune disease. She has also a different portal page for each of her three children. “I noticed about six months ago that I could read the [medical] notes and thought that’s really great because it means you have got a lot of accountability on the doctor’s part as well,” she said. This article appeared on eHealthNews.nz.

Cemosoft CEO Mahesh Dharan explains how the company's technology is enabling clients to deliver patient-centric care.