Archive for January 16th, 2007
Fragmented Experience on eHealth Websites
January 16, 2007
Geocentric posted an editorial by Ben Dillon titled, “The Fragmented Consumer Experience”. In addition to giving some examples of frustration with a health care provider website, he lists his expectations of consumer websites from Google and Amazon, for instance,
- I want you to remember who I am
- I want you to get smarter about addressing my needs the more time that I spend working with you
- I want my experience to be personalized around the tasks and concerns that I have right now
- I want you to provide easy access to the information and tools that I need to make decisions
- I want to interact with you through your website. Don’t send me off to other random sites, I can do that with Google. This includes passing me to some health system parent organization website. I came to you, not to them
- I want to be able to complete with you online any interaction that does not require physician examination or phlebotomy
- I want to be able to email with my physician or her office/clinic securely
- I want to be able to see my bill online, I want to get explanations of my bill online, I want to be able to ask questions about my bill online and I want to be able to pay my bill online
All of these are reasonable expectations, but few providers/health systems have these features. Why – little incentive, costs, lack of vision? If the value of a patient portal with broad features can show some return on investment, even if it is simply a competitive advantage in a local or national market, more providers might join in providing a richer experience.
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Meeting with editor from the Lancet
January 16, 2007
On Friday, I had the pleasant opportunity to meet with Faith McLellan, Ph. D., North American Senior Editor of The Lancet. Her interest was in Web 2.0 in medicine and also how it might be utilized in medical journals such as her own. To their credit, The Lancet has been experimenting with their own blog, but only have a rare article on Web 2.0 or Healthcare IT in general. I hope we will see a change in that.
Also attend a presentation by the senior editor, Richard Horton, on fraud in medical research and how journals have to deal with it when discovered.
Share this:AHIC Consumer Empowerment Workgroup meeting January 10, 2007
January 16, 2007
The workgroup heard testimony on security and PHRs. According to HITS, “While personal health records are still very much in the infancy stage, PHR vendor privacy and security policies are embryonic at best, at least according to a review of 30 publicly available policies presented Jan. 10 to the consumer empowerment work group of the American Health Information Community HHS advisory panel.” According to a powerpoint by Altarum,
- Policies are highly variable and not particularly broad in scope
- None had more than 18 of the 31 criteria
- Remaining 29 (97%) covered less than half of criteria
- Many emphasized security procedures or Internet privacy policies of the vendor’s web site, rather than protections of PHR data.
I am glad that AHIC is shining a light on security in PHRs. As I have said repeatedly, unless the consumer can trust that their data is secure, adoption will continue to lag, no matter what other benefits are promoted.
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