E-health and consumer empowerment : how consumers can use technology today and in the future to improve their health : hearing before the Subcommittee on Science, Technology, and Space of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, United States Senate, One Hundred Seventh Congress, first session, July 23, 2001.

This unique collection synthesizes insights and evidence from innovators in consumer informatics and highlights the technical, behavioral, social, and policy issues driving digital health today and in the foreseeable future. Consumer Informatics and Digital Health presents the fundamentals of mobile health, reviews the evidence for consumer technology as a driver of health behavior change, and examines user experience and real-world technology design challenges and successes. Additionally, it identifies key considerations for successfully engaging consumers in their own care, considers the ethics of using personal health information in research, and outlines implications for health system redesign. The editors’ integrative systems approach heralds a future of technological advances tempered by best practices drawn from today’s critical policy goals of patient engagement, community health promotion, and health equity. Here’s the inside view of consumer health informatics and key digital fields that students and professionals will find inspiring, informative, and thought-provoking. Included among the topics: • Healthcare social media for consumer informatics • Understanding usability, accessibility, and human-centered design principles • Understanding the fundamentals of design for motivation and behavior change • Digital tools for parents: innovations in pediatric urgent care • Behavioral medicine and informatics in the cancer community • Content strategy: writing for health consumers on the web • Open science and the future of data analytics • Digital approaches to engage consumers in value-based purchasing Consumer Informatics and Digital Health takes an expansive view of the fields influencing consumer informatics and offers practical case-based guidance for a broad range of audiences, including students, educators, researchers, journalists, and policymakers interested in biomedical informatics, mobile health, information science, and population health. It has as much to offer readers in clinical fields such as medicine, nursing, and psychology as it does to those engaged in digital pursuits.

Aims and Scope Patients are more empowered to shape their own health care today than ever before. Health information technologies are creating new opportunities for patients and families to participate actively in their care, manage their medical problems and improve communication with their healthcare providers. Moreover, health information technologies are enabling healthcare providers to partner with their patients in a bold effort to optimize quality of care, improve health outcomes and transform the healthcare system on the macro-level. In this book, leading figures discuss the existing needs, challenges and opportunities for improving patient engagement and empowerment through health information technology, mapping out what has been accomplished and what work remains to truly transform the care we deliver and engage patients in their care. Policymakers, healthcare providers and administrators, consultants and industry managers, researchers and students and, not least, patients and their family members should all find value in this book. "In the exciting period that lies just ahead, more will be needed than simply connecting patients to clinicians, and clinicians to each other. The health care systems that will be most effective in meeting patients' needs will be those that can actually design their 'human wares' around that purpose. This book provides deep insight into how information technology can and will support that redesign." Thomas H. Lee, MD, MSc, Chief Medical Officer, Press Ganey Associates; Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School and Professor of Health Policy and Management, Harvard School of Public Health The Editors: Drs. Maria Adela Grando, Ronen Rozenblum and David W. Bates are widely recognized professors, researchers and experts in the domain of health information technology, patient engagement and empowerment. Their research, lectures and contributions in these domains have been recognized nationally and internationally. Dr. Grando is affiliated with Arizona State University and the Mayo Clinic, and Drs. Rozenblum and Bates are affiliated with Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard University.

"An engaging introduction to an exciting multidisciplinary field where positive impact depends less on technology than on understanding and responding to human motivations, specific information needs, and life constraints." -- Betsy L. Humphreys, former Deputy Director, National Library of Medicine This is a book for people who want to design or promote information technology that helps people be more active and informed participants in their healthcare. Topics include patient portals, wearable devices, apps, websites, smart homes, and online communities focused on health. Consumer Healthcare Informatics: Enabling Digital Health for Everyone educates readers in the core concepts of consumer health informatics: participatory healthcare; health and e-health literacy; user-centered design; information retrieval and trusted information resources; and the ethical dimensions of health information and communication technologies. It presents the current state of knowledge and recent developments in the field of consumer health informatics. The discussions address tailoring information to key user groups, including patients, consumers, caregivers, parents, children and young adults, and older adults. For example, apps are considered as not just a rich consumer technology with the promise of empowered personal data management and connectedness to community and healthcare providers, but also a domain rife with concerns for effectiveness, privacy, and security, requiring both designer and user to engage in critical thinking around their choices. This book’s unique contribution to the field is its focus on the consumer and patient in the context of their everyday life outside the clinical setting. Discussion of tools and technologies is grounded in this perspective and in a context of real-world use and its implications for design. There is an emphasis on empowerment through participatory and people-centered care.

There is great enthusiasm over the use of emerging interactive health information technologies-often referred to as eHealth-and the potential these technologies have to improve the quality, capacity, and efficiency of the health care system. However, many doctors, advocacy groups, policy makers and consumers are concerned that electronic health systems might help individuals and communities with greater resources while leaving behind those with limited access to technology. In order to address this problem, the Institute of Medicine's Roundtable on Health Literacy held a workshop to explore the current status of communication technology, the challenges for its use in populations with low health literacy, and the strategies for increasing the benefit of these technologies for populations with low health literacy. The summary of the workshop, "Health Literacy, eHealth, and Communication: Putting the Consumer First," includes participants' comments on these issues.

This book explores the benefits of digital patient engagement, from the perspectives of physicians, providers, and others in the healthcare system, and discusses what is working well in this new, digitally-empowered collaborative environment. Chapters present the changing landscape of patient engagement, starting with the impact of new payment models and Meaningful Use requirements, and the effects of patient engagement on patient safety, quality and outcomes, effective communications, and self-service transactions. The book explores social media and mobile as tools, presents guidance on privacy and security challenges, and provides helpful advice on how providers can get started. Vignettes and 23 case studies showcase the impact of patient engagement from a wide variety of settings, from large providers to small practices, and traditional medical clinics to eTherapy practices.