Study pinpoints methods to boost patient engagement
Spurring patient engagement with health IT requires an understanding of the social, technical and environmental components surrounding its use, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association.
Consumer health informatics (CHI) applications, such as remote monitoring systems, personal health records, decision support systems, and online health communities, are being created to support patients in their own self-care and self-management. However, “previous studies have documented mixed effectiveness, efficiency and patient-centeredness of these tools,” wrote lead author Rupa Valdez, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Public Health Sciences at the University of Virginia, and colleagues.
To spur engagement, the authors suggested that developers consider work system models related directly to work performed by patients, known as “patient work.”
A patient work approach extends existing approaches to CHI design that are responsive to patients’ biomedical realities and personal skills and behaviors, while focusing on the embeddedness of patients’ health management in larger processes and contexts and prioritizes patients’ perspectives on illness management, according to the authors. Synthesized together, the work models Systems Engineering Initiative for Patient Safety 2.0 and the Human Factors of Health Care in the Home identify five critical components of a patient work system:
- Individuals or groups involved
- The tasks needed to be completed, including level of difficulty, complexity, timing, familiarity and variety
- The tools and technology required to perform the tasks
- The physical environment where health management occurs
- The socio-organizational environment where the health management occurs
“A patient work framework augments existing approaches to CHI design through explicit responsiveness to the contexts of patients’ use, and by taking patients’ activities and perspectives into full account,” concluded Valdez et al. “Patient work approaches can help develop and deploy consumer-facing technologies that better leverage their full potential.”
The authors suggested further exploration is needed, particularly on: (1) theories of patient work; (2) methods for assessing patient work; and (3) techniques for translating knowledge of patient work into CHI application design.
Access the article here.