ABSTRACT
In the absence of international standards, widely differing attitudes and laws, medical and social cultures strongly influence whether and how patients may access their medical records in various settings of care. Reviewing records, including the notes clinicians write, can help shape how people participate in their own care. Aided at times by new technologies, individual patients and care partners are repurposing existing tools and designing innovative, often 'low-tech' ways to collect, sort and interpret their own health information. To illustrate diverse approaches that individuals may take, six individuals from six nations offer anecdotes demonstrating how they are learning to collect, assess and benefit from their personal health information.
Subject(s)
Health Records, Personal , Medical Records , Australia , Canada , Chile , Humans , Japan , SwedenABSTRACT
Patient portals are becoming increasingly available at medical institutions, worldwide. Reporting of patient portal adoption strategies is scarce. A multi-institutional health network in Toronto, Canada is seeing great success with its portal adoption by patients, with an annual adoption rate of almost 65%. In the literature, annually adoption rates in Canada range between 5% and 10%. This significant difference and high adoption is attributed to a multifactorial approach that includes a dedicated operations team to engage with patients and staff, a co-design approach for portal development and more recently, new data-driven strategies to affirm and recommend promotion approaches. Advanced data mining and analytics are promising tools to help improve the adoption rate. This paper will describe five analytics tools used to describe and potentially improve patient portal adoption rates.
