Priya Ramachandran, EMR Thoughts
“Everytime we discuss something innovative and interesting to do with our lives, my friend comes up with yet another app or game we should design and market via the App Stores and live richly and happily forever. And I, true to my vaguely creative pursuits, always state that not every problem has a solution rooted in IT or mobile phones or the next iThingamajig.
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Spring H. Health Information and Libraries Journal, 28(2)
The popularity of Health 2.0 technologies has grown exponentially in recent years. They are increasingly being used to inform and support professional practice.
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van Deursen AJAM, van Dijk JAGM. J Med Internet Res, 13(2)
BACKGROUND
Despite the amount of online health information, there are several barriers that limit the Internet’s adoption as a source of health information. One of these barriers is highlighted in conceptualizations of the digital divide which include the differential possession of Internet skills, or “eHealth literacy”. Most measures of Internet skills among populations at large use self-assessments. The research discussed here applies a multifaceted definition of Internet skills and uses actual performance tests.
OBJECTIVE
The purpose of this study was to assess how ready a sample of the general population is for eHealth. More specifically, four types of Internet skills were measured in a performance test in which subjects had to complete health-related assignments on the Internet.
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Bratan T et al, Health Expectations, 13(4)
BACKGROUND
The introduction of electronic patient records that are accessible by multiple providers raises security issues and requires informed consent – or at the very least, an opportunity to opt out. Introduction of the Summary Care Record (SCR) (a centrally stored electronic summary of a patient’s medical record) in pilot sites in the UK was associated with low awareness, despite an intensive public information programme that included letters, posters, leaflets, and road shows. AIM To understand why the public information programme had limited impact and to learn lessons for future programmes.
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Francisco Lupiáñez-Villanueva, ICTconsequences
“I have posted before about the importance of eInclusion and eHealth and Inverse Care Law 2.0 talking about the successive kinds of access to digital technology but I have not posted about what are the reasons for not having access to the Internet at home to explain why eHealth literacy could be a catalyst to overall digital literacy among the elderly.
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Porter SC et al, J Med Internet Res, 13(1)
Background:
Health care systems increasingly rely on patients’ data entry efforts to organize and assist in care delivery through health information exchange.
Objectives:
We sought to determine (1) the variation in burden imposed on parents by data entry efforts across paper-based and computer-based environments, and (2) the impact, if any, of parents’ health literacy on the task burden.
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Whitten P et al, J Telemed Telecare, 17(1)
We examined 62 telehealth websites using four assessment criteria: design, literacy, information and telehealth content. The websites came from the member list of the American Telemedicine Association and the Office for the Advancement of Telehealth and partner sites, and were included if they were currently active and at least three clicks deep. Approximately 130 variables were examined for each website by two independent researchers.
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Ted Eytan, MD
“In a nutshell, Kaiser Permanente patients with diabetes were surveyed regarding the potential for disparities in their condition management and outcomes, and crossmatched with their use of Kaiser Permanente’s My Health Manager as of January-December, 2006.
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Sarkar U et al, Journal of Health Communication, 15 (Supp 2)
Internet-based patient portals are intended to improve access and quality, and will play an increasingly important role in health care, especially for diabetes and other chronic diseases. Diabetes patients with limited health literacy have worse health outcomes, and limited health literacy may be a barrier to effectively utilizing internet-based health access services. We investigated use of an internet-based patient portal among a well characterized population of adults with diabetes. We estimated health literacy using three validated self-report items. We explored the independent association between health literacy and use of the internet-based patient portal, adjusted for age, gender, race/ethnicity, educational attainment, and income.
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Yardley L et al, BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making, 10(1)
Background
It is recognised as good practice to use qualitative methods to elicit users’ views of internet-delivered health-care interventions during their development. This paper seeks to illustrate the advantages of combining usability testing with ‘theoretical modelling’, i.e. analyses that relate the findings of qualitative studies during intervention development to social science theory, in order to gain deeper insights into the reasons and context for how people respond to the intervention. This paper illustrates how usability testing may be enriched by theoretical modelling by means of two qualitative studies of users’ views of the delivery of information in an internet-delivered intervention to help users decide whether they needed to seek medical care for their cold or flu symptoms.
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Ahava Leibtag, Online it ALL Matters
“Earlier this year, the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion published a must-read for any Web professional producing healthcare websites, “Health Literacy Online: A guide to writing and designing easy-to-use health Web sites.” [PDF] The report is 98-pages, but if you are a healthcare content strategist and Web writer like myself, it’s a fascinating read.”
Article
Ahava Leibtag, Online it ALL Matters, 25 August 2010
Mary Mosquera, Government Health IT
“The Veterans Affairs Department plans to develop a kiosk-based system for its mental health clinics that would allow patients who have limited computer literacy or cognitive disabilities to conduct self-assessments of their conditions.
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Boruff JT, Plejic MJ, Journal of Consumer Health On the Internet, 14(2)
The Infothegraveque Health Education Collection is an Internet database with a bilingual search interface that addresses the search and language abilities of health professionals and patients alike and that facilitates access to the patient education materials used by the six hospital sites of the McGill University Health Centre.
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Ramon Nuez, The Huffington Post
“The American Recovery and Reinvestment Bill of 2009 has targeted broadband as an instrument to help in revitalizing our economy. The investment in this information infrastructure will not only help to create jobs but assist in developing new technologies, applications and services. These initiatives are part of the “Transforming Our Economy With Science And Technology” heading.
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IOM
The National Healthcare Quality Report (NHQR) concludes that the quality of health care in the United States is suboptimal, and the pace of improvement is slow. Across the core quality measures tracked in the NHQR, patients receive needed care less than 60 percent of the time. Even when measures of quality, such as receipt of appropriate screening for colorectal cancer, show improvement over time, the National Healthcare Disparities Report, for example, shows that disparities persist for specific population groups.
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Alice Lipowicz, FCW
“Dave deBronkart has a rather unique perspective on the health information technology debate: He’s a cancer survivor, “e-Patient Dave” blogger and a believer in the power of technology to improve health care for patients, providers and the government.
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Julie Esparza, Health Literacy
“The latest issue of AHRQ WebM&M http://webmm.ahrq.gov in the Perspectives in Safety section has some commentary on Health Literacy and Patient Safety.
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“Americans have the right to access and take ownership of their health records, yet few take advantage of it despite the increasing complexity and cost of health care.
Physicians, for their part, are wary of relying on records provided by patients.”
Article
Gary Gosselin, Michigan Business Review, 3 September 2008
“If you think patient literacy isn’t a problem in your practice, think again. A 2004 Institute of Medicine report found that one out of two adults has problems understanding patient education literature, forms they’re asked to complete, medication instructions, and information the doctor tells them about their health conditions and treatments.”
Article
, Medical Economics, 7 July 2008
“The American College of Physicians has released a position paper that endorses e-health programs, but it also calls for doctors to receive higher fees for their use of health information technology.
“E-Health activities have great potential to transform health care in the United States,” Dr. Joel Levine, chairman of the ACP board of regents, said at a Washington press conference today. At the same time, he said increased payments are needed to compensate doctors for the cost of acquiring and maintaining the technology.”
Article
Nancy Ferris, Government Health IT, 16 May 2008
