When somebody says “Healthcare Portal”, what does that mean to you? Unfortunately the word portal has been used so broadly that it generally is confusing. Here are examples of how the word portal is used in various contexts:
- In the new federal healthcare law, the government is mandating that a health exchange portal be created. In this portal, people will be able to look at various plans offered on the exchange and be able to purchase one. This is analogous to a travel site such as Orbitz or Expedia letting you look at a various air fares and hotels.
- MedLine and WebMD are touted as health information portals. These sites give you access to lots of content from a variety of sources that you would otherwise have to find on your own.
- Some hospitals like the Cleveland Clinic provide a patient portal where you can see your test results and information about your appointments. Often times you can schedule appointments or pay your bill through the portal.
- Doctors and nurses sometimes have clinical portals that allow them to access patient records and other information online, order tests, and sometimes order prescriptions.
All these examples are widely different applications of the concept of a portal. However, they all share one particular attribute: aggregation. All the “portals” mentioned above aggregate information from various resources and pull it together so the user can make some sense of it.
Having access to content and information is great and sometimes that’s all you need. But to complete your experience, you often want to get something done. So a second attribute that is shared by some of these portals is the ability to take action for yourself. You can schedule an appointment, refill a prescription, purchase insurance, order tests, etc.
So what makes a great healthcare portal? 
- First it has to aggregate information on your behalf and based on what you are interested.
- Second it has to let you take action right there
In the recent past, many healthcare portals have been introduced, but often have fallen short of being a great portal. In most cases, the portal only provides one of the two key attributes listed above or implemented one attribute too lightly. For example, many patient and doctor portals provide access to medical records, but fail to aggregate information from other sources. Other portals provides lots of aggregated information, but don’t tie that information to what the user needs to accomplish.
Here are some examples of where a great healthcare portal can be realized:
- On a patient portal, display the users medication list, but when they click on a particular drug show them the directions for their use of that drug. Also give them the drug interaction information, generic names, etc. You should also get information about their insurance coverage for that drug (pharmacies can do that!). At the same time allow them to submit a refill request through their own pharmacy. Give them a way to request an appointment right there. Or provide a way to send an email to the doctor to ask about generic alternatives.
- On a doctor portal, provide the doctor with a history of a patient’s refills of the medications they take from across all sources. This provides the doctor with more information that just what he has prescribed. Just as with the patient portal, provide all information about the drug right there so the doctor doesn’t have to go anywhere else. Now, what actions should be available to the doctor? How about send a prescription to a pharmacy for the patient? Why not provide a way to chat with the drug company if she has questions? How about sending an email to the drug rep to get more samples? How about we go ask the doctors what actions they want to perform and put them in there.
We can come up with all sorts of examples of where aggregation and action will provide a great healthcare portal. The key is to pay attention to both aspects and don’t short-change one over the other.
