Week 9: Consumer Health Informatics and Mobile Apps Flashcards
What is consumer health informatics (CHI)?
(also called patient/consumer health tech)
defined broadly as any tool, technology, or system that is:
- primarily designed to interact with health information users or consumers
- interacts directly with consumer who provides personal health information to CHI system and receives personalized health information back
- data, information, recommendations, or other benefits provided to consumer that may be used with a healthcare professional, but is not dependent on a healthcare professional
encompasses broad range of patient/consumer applications
What are the 4 factors that have contributed to the growth of CHI?
- availability (and marketing) of health information directly to consumers
- rise of chronic diseases and need for patient self-management
- increasing strains on current health systems designed to treat acute symptoms
- patients are less willing to automatically accept opinion of their healthcare provider
What is digital health literacy?
broad set of skills essential to properly use web-based applications and digital health resources
What is digital health literacy increasingly becoming linked as? What implications does this have?
increasingly becoming linked as a determinant of health
as a result, patients/consumers want:
- accessible medical information (ie. internet resources, apps)
- access to their records via patient portal (ie. patient health records)
- alternatives to access care (ie. telehealth)
Recall the general state of medical information available online and on medical talk shows based on current available evidence.
state of online medical information is poor
What are the 6 common features of a patient portal?
- online registration (updating demographic info, check doctor schedules, make appointments)
- submit medication refill requests
- receive, track, and input lab results
- patient education materials
- personal health records (PHR), including patient updates of status and uploading clinically relevant findings
- secure messaging with the healthcare team
What are personal health records?
electronic record of health-related information on an individual, drawing from multiple sources, and created/managed by the individual
What are the similar pros/cons of PHRs with EHRs? (3)
- needs to be interoperable and transferable
- security concerns
- data that is captured needs to be presented in a readable format
What are 3 barriers to adopting personal health records?
- meaningful data needs to be populated for the patient
- PHRs tethered to an EMR may not allow integration points with other competing vendors
- patient digital health literacy
What are the different functions of mobile apps that can be used in healthcare? (7)
- help patients self-manage their disease
- provide patients with simple tools to track health info
- provide info related to patient’s health conditions or treatments
- patients document, show, or communicate potential medical conditions to health care providers
- automate simple tasks for health care providers
- allow interaction with personal health records
- transfer, store, or convert medical device data
What might clinical pharmacists use mobile computing devices for? (4)
- online searches
- accessing drug information databases (CPS)
- accessing point-of-care references (UpToDate, Lexicomp)
- accessing calculators
What are the important characteristics that should be used to evaluate mobile apps? (9)
- usefulness
- accuracy
- authority/authorship
- objectivity
- timeliness
- functionality
- design
- security
- value
What are the limitations of the use of mobile apps in the clinical setting?
- apps may not have medical professional involvement
- simple to complex app functionality associated with increasing chance of harm/risk
