Interactive systems for patient-centered care to enhance patient engagement

In today’s society, most people are both consumers of information technology and of health care. Virtually every person has consumed health care and will consume more as one ages. Moreover, 84% of US households own a computer,1 and 64% of adults own a smartphone.2 We carry pocket-sized devices that connect us to people around the world and vast stores of information. With these technologies, we manage our lives from mundane activities like reading, checking the weather, making to-do lists, and buying books and clothes, to more complex tasks such as learning, managing finances, shopping for houses, and maintaining ties with friends and family around the world. With such diverse and powerful technologies at our fingertips and myriad societal-level health care challenges in cost, quality, and outcome, it is tantalizing to imagine all of the ways that health information technologies (health IT) can be used to enhance people’s health and societies’ health care delivery. Patient-centered care respects and responds to individual differences in patient preferences, needs, and values.3 To respond to such differences and achieve patient-centered care, patients and health care professionals must engage in constant communication. In recent years, researchers have examined a number of ostensibly patient-oriented technologies that could enhance such communication, including patient portals, personal health records (PHRs), and mobile health (mHealth) applications. Furthermore, it is not difficult to conceptualize pathways through which such information systems might improve communication between patients and clinicians, create more patient-centered care, and help achieve the triple aim of better experiences of care, better population health, and lower health care costs.3 Yet, practically, these enticing tools and outcomes are far from reality. There is scant evidence that patients frequently or effectively access and use information systems that engage them and improve patient-centered care delivery. For example, patients generally have …