The Informed Brain in a Digital World Interdisciplinary Research Team Summaries (2013) / Chapter Skim
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IDR Team Summary 6: Determine how the effects of the digital age will improve health and wellness.
IDR Team Summary 6: Determine how the effects of the digital age will improve health and wellness.
Pages 69-80
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From page 69... ...
The team challenge is to examine current strategic efforts aimed at these or other comparable health and wellness endpoints and devise practicable means to exploit the digital information explosion in these proposed solutions. Improved Career-Long Education In current medical education, the medical student must learn not only the relevant facts and their application to disease mechanisms, treatment, diagnosis and prevention, but assimilate into that body of working knowledge all the new facts that will emerge during their careers as practicing physicians.
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From page 70... ...
Given the reductions in hours allowed by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, the training career opportunities for post-graduate medical education has become seriously constrained by limits in maximum hour work weeks, reducing the time to develop experi ential competencies in the skills needed for effective practice, a problem that will be even more critical if the ultimate national healthcare plan reduces the Medicare contributions that presently fund for post-graduate clinical training. The rapidly broadening armamentarium of powerful new medications requiring lifelong dosing and their complex interactions with individual patients creates multiple potential adverse drug interactions, specific to individual patient diagnoses.
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From page 71... ...
How effectively can the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information enforce that such electronic health records will be interoperable across medical practice systems while ensuring confidentiality of individual personal details and vulnerabilities, and at the same time serve as a national epidemiological surveillance for the emergence of communicable diseases or adverse drug effects? Improved Health Management by Physicians and Patients Another major shift in the practice of medicine is the development of digital communication systems to administer medical treatment at a distance, educate patients, and monitor disease states, often termed "tele medicine." An extreme example is the tele-intensive care unit (tele-ICU; Goran 2012)
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From page 72... ...
• How can digital technologies avoid becoming a barrier between the doctor and patient? • How can electronic health records be used to maximize patient outcomes?
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From page 73... ...
Sharar, University of Washington • Tian Zhang, Duke University Hospital IDR TEAM SUMMARY -- GROUP 6A Paromita Pain, NAKFI Science Writing Scholar University of Southern California, Los Angeles IDR Team 6A was asked to determine how new tools and metrics of the digital age will improve health and wellness. It was a very diverse team consisting of a technologist who works with acquisition and interpretation of "big data," two medical doctors and other experts in gerontology, hematology, brain science, and computational biology.
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From page 74... ...
It's also about establishing a relationship of trust." Research has shown that "The doctor–patient relationship has been and remains a keystone of care: the medium in which data are gathered, diagnoses and plans are made, compliance is accomplished, and healing, patient activation, and support are provided."1 The team examined these wide ranging aspects of doctor-patient interactions and electronic medical record-keeping, but wanted to focus more on how technical innovations could further improve general wellness, rather than facilitate treatment on a case-by-case basis. The team almost unanimously hit on the idea of strengthening doctor-patient relationships as a key to making care more focused on patients, in an effort to promote personal patient responsibility in the wellness and healthcare processes.
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From page 75... ...
The problem was defined as how to best design and use technology to fundamentally change the continuum of health care starting from preventive care to the diagnosis of disease to maintenance care and the reinforcement of health care, by improving the doctor–patient relationship. A technology platform was envisioned that would help: • Enhance the quality of the doctor-patient contact in a positive way • Doctors and other providers change patient behaviors in a positive way for general wellness, disease prevention, or long-term or short-term health care • Set up a system that will help the patient share responsibility for his/ her wellness and health care Exploring solutions: The big opportunity, as the team decided, is to use technical advancements to create a single ‘cradle to grave' health record system that would improve doctor-patient relations by providing continuous monitoring of healthcare parameters, as well as non-intrusive care to prevent disease manage chronic conditions, and help diagnose/treat unexpected conditions like strokes and heart attacks.
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From page 76... ...
The team envisaged a sort of digital invisible scribe system that would extract key words/phrases as the doctor and patient discussed health and wellness, and automatically organize these data into an intelligible written record of the patient encounter, thereby obviating the need for doctors to manually enter data into an electronic medical record. The system eliminates the need for the doctor having to take attention away from the patient for record-keeping, thereby enhancing the doctor-patient interaction while creating a comprehensive record of the interaction.
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From page 77... ...
Tan, Microsoft Research • Kate Yandell, New York University IDR TEAM SUMMARY -- GROUP 6B Kate Yandell, NAKFI Science Writing Scholar New York University IDR Team 6B was tasked with understanding how digital technology can be used to improve health care. The team decided to focus instead on a narrower question: How can we use digital technology to empower patients to better understand and manage their own health?
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From page 78... ...
And finally, how can we motivate people to engage in their own preventive care, such as exercising and eating healthily? New Uses for Electronic Medical Records The team agreed early on that patients should have easier access to their own medical data.
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From page 79... ...
The team's new challenge: help people transition from unaware to aware and from aware to actively engaged. The team decided that one of the more effective ways of getting people to engage digitally with their own health would be to focus on capturing children's interest and attention with an educational game, related to health, diet, and physical activities.
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From page 80... ...
In an era when large amounts of medical data and many choices exist, patients can, and should, become a ctive participants in their own medical care decisions. Team 6B's apps for electronic medical records would help adults a ccess and, more important, interpret information about their own bodies. E ngaged, empowered patients would take better care of themselves both within and outside the doctor's office.
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