Providing Health Information to Busy Patients

“People are not built to pay attention.” – Dr. Clifford Nass, Connected Health Symposium 2011

This priceless piece of wisdom was provided during last month’s Connected Health Symposium in Boston. What Dr. Nass successfully communicating to symposium attendees is that while we envision a world where patients are consuming healthcare information in isolation of all else, they are actually consuming information the way that we all actually do in this real-time, fast paced environment. In essence, providing health information in isolation can’t happen.

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The volume of information in patient portals can be overwhelming. Add to this information that is provided by web sources, personal relationships, and from the body itself by way of general aches and pains, and it is easy to see how patients can get confused. While recognition technology built into portals is just around the corner, there is an outlet that patients can use that is quite similar to the environments that physicians use to comb through the vast amount of information they need to perform medicine: online communities.

Should doctors, nurses, and social workers recommend online patient communities to patients?

Doctors use physician social networks, such as Ozmosis, to communicate with one another, share medical information and refine treatment protocols. Online patient communities, on the other hand, allow patients to network socially, support one another emotionally, and help each other comb through the vast amounts of information available to them as patients as well.

Coincidentally, the doctor that prescribed an online patient community to “ePatient Dave” was seated directly behind me at a particular panel discussion. He is obviously an advocate for prescribing these online patient communities, but he mentioned that many providers either do not know they exist or do not know how to recommend them.

Is it the responsibility of physicians to keep abreast of these online patient communities so that all available options for treatment are available to patients? Should patients have to wait?