Empowering Patients to Improve their Health in the Digital Era
Sophia Martinez, Princeton University
The Patient-Physician Relationship in the Digital Era
Technology is reshaping the dynamics in the patient-physician relationship, giving patients the tools to become active stakeholders in their healthcare decisions. As information becomes more accessible, patients gain the potential to become more empowered. In the digital era, people can access information about their bodies and health with a simple click. Every day, people around the world search and ‘Google’ more than 1 billion health-related questions including using digital devices to check heart rate and function [1,2]. People can take a look at their watches and telephones and access information about their heart rate, daily step count, expected caloric consumption, and even hours of deep sleep they had in a day. Women are now able to buy oral contraceptives through mobile applications, and teenagers are flooded with articles on menstruation on Snapchat's weekly news. Furthermore, people can give and receive advice and hear stories from survivors via social media platforms and blogs, allowing them to receive support from all corners of the world.
However, technology and information on their own do not empower patients. For patients to fully become empowered, both patients and physicians need to learn how to use these tools properly. For instance, a well-read patient on a specific health condition might gain little to no benefit without the proper guidance and interpretation from their physician. Nonetheless, for these conversations to happen, the patient needs to feel comfortable enough to share their insights and knowledge. Studies have shown that patient satisfaction increases when physicians do not disregard the information, they bring with them [3]. Thus, patients must be encouraged by their physicians to share any relevant information that they have with them. Physicians should be able to create an environment in which the internet-informed patient feels comfortable sharing the information they have gathered.
As information becomes more available, so does misinformation. The current Coronavirus pandemic has shed light on the flood of disinformation that is out on the internet. Not only can misinformation unnecessarily increase the patient's anxiety, but it is also a disservice to medical consultations. This can complicate the consult's nature, as it means that more time is now spent sorting through the information that the patient brings with them [4]. This, however, is not particular in the case of misinformation. Even when a patient comes in with valid information, the efficiency of the consult might be compromised as more time is spent reviewing what the information the patient has encountered.
Thus, the challenge lies in creating the perfect environment so that joint patient-physician health decision making is possible. The digital era patient can come into a consult with a googled diagnosis or information about their health collected through different devices and applications, or, as in my case, with both. Thus, physicians should not only be thought of as diagnosticians but also as the interpreters and translators of data that will come in different forms. Therefore, it is necessary to train physicians on how to analyze, disentangle, and interpret this information in an efficient manner.
Physicians as Interpreters of Information
Learners must receive appropriate training to deal with the vast amounts of information they will be presented with when evaluating patients. As technology makes health information more readily available, healthcare providers must learn how to integrate these pieces of information into their diagnoses and treatments. This means that future professionals should be able to gain insights from their patient's research and the knowledge that their devices and applications make available.
To do this, the medical curriculum should include courses that acquaint with new healthcare technologies, with particular emphasis on personal devices and mobile applications. It is no longer sufficient to know about the technologies that will have readily available- they must understand how to own devices work and how to interpret the data that comes from these tools [5] Furthermore since data only becomes more abundant, education should identify the validity and reliability of the information that they and their patients will be exposed to. Thus, metrics must be used to assess the usefulness of these medical tools, without disregarding them completely.
Also, the healthcare and medical curriculum could benefit from more quantitative and analytical components, as future physicians will have to deal with vast amounts of information. Medical students should be trained to tease apart the information presented to them during a diagnosis, analyze the data they deem to be useful and be able to integrate these different sources into their treatment. A more analytical focus on the medical curriculum will provide medical professionals with the tools to make maximum use of the resources that technology has made available to them.
Empowering Patients in the Digital Era
To empower patients to improve their health, patients should also be able to make maximum use of the tools that are made available to them. What use is telehealth that can detect heart irregularities, if a patient does not know these are abnormal? What purpose is a google search about coronavirus symptoms, if a lot of the information is incorrect? Therefore, it is essential that physicians not only use this data but also encourage their patients to make correct use of this information. However, this might come with problems, as once patients search for answers on their own, it might be difficult to redirect them to reliable sources [6].
To aid on this issue of misuse of information and misinformation, it would be useful to consider the benefits of investing in medical websites and search engines that are reliable and accessible to people. This would potentially allow physicians to guide their patients to trustworthy sites and facilitate a dialogue between them. However, it is essential to consider how this might change people's perception of medical consultations. [] The intent of medical information and medical devices should not replace medical professionals but to give access to tools that aid physicians and patients in better understanding their health.
To empower patients, both physicians and patients must know how to make appropriate use of the tools and information available to them. Though technology can be a powerful tool, without proper training for physicians and guidance for patients, this information does not add much value. Thus, it is important to re-evaluate how technology changes the patient-physician relationship to implement the necessary changes to benefit patients further. It is also essential to consider that not everyone has access to the same tools in the digital era. What future steps can be taken to mitigate how technological advancements can empower patients but can drive further digital divide.
References
[1 https://9to5mac.com/2020/07/01/critical-heart-disease/
[3]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5290294/
[4]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1761896/
[5]https://www.chcf.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/PDF-HowSmartphonesChangingHealthCare.pdf