eHealth in rehabilitation becomes standard in improving doctor-patient relationship

eHealth technologies have set out to improve the physician-patient relationship between is an essential part of any successful healing process. An opinion piece by physicians analyzing how rehabilitation medicine uses eHealth outlines three points to how the doctor-patient relationship can be improved.

"There have been a lot of ambivalent thoughts about technology and health care both on the clinician side and the patient side," said Center for Health Innovation and Implementation Science scientist Sophia Wang, MD, assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at Indiana University School of Medicine. "We need to rethink the potential positive benefits of technology in enhancing the patient-provider relationship and act upon that potential."

The physicians state the three main roles of eHealth in the doctor-patient relationship are knowing the patient, the exchange of information to educate patients and shared action plans in regard to care. By improving patient knowledge and keeping them involves in their own care, eHealth leads to higher success rates in care and a higher quality of life for patients.

The authors specifically looked at how rehabilitation medicine utilized eHealth because of the success it has shown in many aspects of treatments. Through the use of telemedicine, personalized mobile applications and increased patient monitoring, the rehabilitation centers are able to better understand their patients and learn about their lives in order to prescribes the best route of care. The use of eHealth technologies has set up the rehabilitation centers as a model to mental health, cardiology and geriatric care facilities.

"We haven't discovered anything really novel, but from a busy doctor's perspective—from my perspective—I have to ask why we aren't doing more with eHealth technology,” said Wang. “Wouldn't it be every doctor's dream that instead of simply noting in a patient's electronic medical record that a certain health issue had been discussed and that an information sheet had been handed to the patient, we could click on something that would provide personalized, individualized attention to the patient or identify an app that would allow the patient to follow up on our advice at home?"