6 hours ago Included studies were categorized by their focus on input factors (eg, portal design), process factors (eg, portal use), and output factors (eg, benefits) and by the valence of their findings regarding patient portals (ie, positive, negative, or mixed). Results: The systematic search … >> Go To The Portal
Patient Portals and Patient Engagement: A State of the Science Review Current research has demonstrated that patients' interest and ability to use patient portals is strongly influenced by personal factors such age, ethnicity, education level, health literacy, health status, and role as a caregiver.
The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act imposes pressure on health care organizations to qualify for “Meaningful Use”. It is assumed that portals should increase patient participation in medical decisions, but whether or not the use of portals improves outcomes remains to be seen.
In this paper, we discuss two forms of patient-facing health IT tools—patient portals and applications (apps)—and highlight how, despite several limitations of each, combining high-yield features of mobile health (mHealth) apps with portals could increase patient engagement and self-management and be more effective than either of them alone.
Several studies reported that patient portals facilitate patient discovery of errors in EMRs [24,26,30,54-56]. Discussion in the literature of how patients could notify health care providers of such errors is lacking. Further research is needed to establish how patient-discovered errors are reported and to identify optimal reporting methods.
A patient portal is a secure online website that gives patients convenient, 24-hour access to personal health information from anywhere with an Internet connection. Using a secure username and password, patients can view health information such as: Recent doctor visits. Discharge summaries.
Patient portal interventions lead to improvements in a wide range of psychobehavioral outcomes, such as health knowledge, self-efficacy, decision making, medication adherence, and preventive service use.
Engaging patients in the delivery of health care has the potential to improve health outcomes and patient satisfaction. Patient portals may enhance patient engagement by enabling patients to access their electronic medical records (EMRs) and facilitating secure patient-provider communication.
Patient portals provide the ability for patients to have 24-hour access to connect with their provider by reviewing patient health information (PHI), asking and answering questions, and reviewing notes, making the patient-physician relationship closer than ever.
Patient portals have privacy and security safeguards in place to protect your health information. To make sure that your private health information is safe from unauthorized access, patient portals are hosted on a secure connection and accessed via an encrypted, password-protected logon.
Electronic health record (EHR) patient portals provide a means by which patients can access their health information, including diagnostic test results.
Further, portals help providers educate their patients and prepare them for future care encounters. When patients have access to their health data, they are better informed, and have the potential to generate deep and meaningful conversations regarding patient wellness during doctor's appointments.
Eight studies reported that patients or their caregivers want more portal education, training, or support. Two studies found that their participants want human connection as they learn about the portal and how to use it, as well as when they encounter issues.
There are two main types of patient portals: a standalone system and an integrated service. Integrated patient portal software functionality usually comes as a part of an EMR system, an EHR system or practice management software. But at their most basic, they're simply web-based tools.
What are the Top Pros and Cons of Adopting Patient Portals?Pro: Better communication with chronically ill patients.Con: Healthcare data security concerns.Pro: More complete and accurate patient information.Con: Difficult patient buy-in.Pro: Increased patient ownership of their own care.
Disadvantages of patient portals result in these lower rates of use. For some people, they avoid using the portals altogether for reasons like security issues, low health literacy, or lack of internet. Even for those who do access their accounts, there are still other disadvantages of patient portals.
The researchers found no demographic differences among nonusers who said that a technology hurdle, lack of internet access or no online medical record was the reason why they did not make use of a patient portal.
Patient portals are intended to engage patients by giving them access to medical information ; however, if patients are unable to understand the information or the system is not usable, patients will not take advantage of them. Despite several aforementioned drawbacks, apps have used evolving innovative designs to engage consumers and offer unique features and functions that could be translated to patient portal design. For instance, Apple's ResearchKit's Diabetes app pings the user daily to update disease and symptom-related information. Check-in questions or user-friendly alerts in portals could similarly be explored for engaging more patients their health care. Alerts could ask if the patient understands an abnormal result, direct them to helpful resources, and encourage test result follow-up. Finally, test results in the portal need to be easily understood by laypeople or displayed using simplified medical terms. For example, a portal might display elevated cholesterol as "↑LDL cholesterol," or even just display the number without a flag, whereas a health app may label it as “bad cholesterol.”
There is growing interest in electronic access to health information and the use of digital data for both disease and health-related tracking. Widespread use of health information technology (IT) could potential ly increase patients’ access to their health information and facilitate future goals of advancing patient-centered care.1 For example, health IT can be used to facilitate information exchange with clinicians and instruct patients when to act upon clinical issues, such as out of range physiologic parameters, follow-up of test results, and complications of medication use. 2 Tools such as personal health records, patient portals, and various mobile health (mHealth) applications (apps) have been developed to help patients engage in their own care. Already, a significant number of patients use health IT; therefore, it is essential that patient-facing health IT be tailored to their needs. In this paper, we discuss two forms of patient-facing health IT tools—patient portals and apps—to highlight how, despite several limitations of each, combining high-yield features of mHealth apps with portals could increase patient engagement and self-management and be more effective than either of them alone. This could potentially improve both patient experience and outcomes related to patient-facing health IT.
In June 2014, Apple announced the HealthKit cloud application programming interface (API) and its partnership with Epic (Verona, WI), an electronic health record vendor who also makes MyChart (a popular patient portal), and the Mayo Clinic (Rochester, MN).
Widespread use of health information technology (IT) could potentially increase patients’ access to their health information and facilitate future goals of advancing patient-centered care. Despite having increased access to their health data, patients do not always understand this information or its implications, ...
This statement accompanies the article Patient portals and health apps: Pitfalls, promises, and what one might learn from the other authored by Jessica L. Baldwin and co-authored by Hardeep Singh, Dean F. Sittig, Traber Davis Giardina and submitted to Healthcare as an Article Type. Authors collectively affirm that this manuscript represents original work that has not been published and is not being considered for publication elsewhere.We also affirm that all authors listed contributed significantly to the project and manuscript. Furthermore we confirm that none of our authors have disclosures and we declare noconflict of interest.
Mobile apps have the capability to record several types of data, such as activity level, nutrition, and sleep, as well as data related to a consumer's condition or disease, such as diabetes or asthma.
Patient portals are personal health record (PHR) systems tethered to a health organization’s electronic health record (EHR) system. They allow patients to track their medical history, access their medical records, and communicate with their health-care providers, and in some cases, they record patient-entered data.
Figure 1 illustrates the literature review strategy.
We looked at the use of a patient portal implemented in early 2009 in a multispecialty group practice in the northeastern United States. As of May 31, 2014, 51,770 active patients in this practice had activated their access to the patient portal.
PHRs have value to providers and patients in numerous health-care settings and scenarios; however, this review of the literature reveals that in the PHR and patient portal knowledge base accumulated to date, very few studies have addressed the use of PHRs for pulmonary conditions or by pulmonologists.
Patient portals have become more accessible over the last decade. 10 Patients can arrange appointments, review diagnostic test results, request prescription refills, communicate with clinicians, and access their medical records.
Patient portals have become more accessible over the last decade. 10 Patients can arrange appointments, review diagnostic test results, request prescription refills, communicate with clinicians, and access their medical records.
A patient portal with access to a personal cross-enterprise electronic health record (PEHR) had to be developed for the project "INFormation technology for PATient-oriented healthcare in the Rhine-Neckar metropolitan region" (INFOPAT). Liferay was chosen as the platform technology in previous researches. Multiple portlets for patients, study members, security officers and administrators had been developed in Java. In this paper all portlets are presented. For three portlets the communication between them, Liferay and the PEHR are described in detail. To communicate with the PEHR a facade called IHE Connector had been implemented too. Despite the broad functionality of the Liferay Core some workarounds had to be implemented. The lack of information in the provided documentation of Liferay lead to delays in development. The Liferay IDE and Liferay itself showed an unstable state.
... Automatic integration of patients' health information from EMRs and EHRs with the PHR would lead to PHRs matching almost as many requirements as PEHRs. The PEHR, as combination of PHR (patient portal to access health information and manage access to this information [38]) and EHR (professional portal and EMR integration), allows for all requirements to be fulfilled when integrated with PRSs. An exception to fully meeting all the requirements are PRM2 and PRM3, because they strongly depend on whether the patients matching the trial consent to being contacted. ...
Communication generally takes the form of secure messaging such as live chat or e-mail among patients and providers , including primary care and specialist physicians, pharmacists, and many others.
mHealth apps will offer an alternative and an additional method of communication. Specialty pharmacies will cater to the patient’s preferred communication style while also being innovative in clinical management of patient care.
When patients cannot communicate in real time, providers can miss opportunities to identify nonadherence. Thus, there is heavy focus on designing portals and apps similar to MyMeds, which incorporates bidirectional communication between providers and patients.
Mobile health (mHealth) is a means of providing health services or information via portals or applications (apps) on wireless devices, such as smartphones or tablets. Patient portals are secure websites that help patients access their health information at their convenience. Many patient portals are mobile enabled via a web-based platform ...
Many patient portals are mobile enabled via a web-based platform and are therefore considered a form of mHealth. Patient-focused mHealth apps—software or programs stored directly on the mobile device—can provide an opportunity for patient-initiated health or disease management.