Technology and The Patient

True engagement comes about through two-way, mutually beneficial conversations.

Technology must look to create multiple ways to facilitate both formal and informal Patient- Doctor Communication. The telephone made a huge impact on the way we communicate, and so did email. Newer technologies must be used to offer ease of use, increase reach and lower costs. Many providers today communicate with their patients using skype, google chat and even facebook. Technologies must build on such success stories.

Doctor–Patient Communication will also benefit if technology vendors link Communication mechanisms to Provider Information Sources and Health Information Exchanges

-- Provide integrations of these mechanisms with clinical and diagnostic software(EMR's, EHR's , etc)

-- Emailing of schedules and reports to patients is a must.

-- Using SMS to send Medical alerts, reminders, and schedules

-- Go the extra distance and use Social Media to provide alerts and reminders to patients via Facebook Messages, Twitter DM's, etc

For years, patients have liked to work in groups, to support each other, to help themselves cope with illnesses which their near and dear ones don’t understand, to seek advice from others who have similar ailments. 

Bringing people together in collaborative dialogue to explore social conditions that are the major influences of health and illness generates deeper collective awareness and community-driven action.

Since Individuals don’t see their lives partitioned into an online and offline world, Online communities should be given as much value as offline ones. A variety of Online Communities must come up for connecting patients quickly and privately with others who share similar health experiences. A fantastic example of one such community is Patients Like Me

Technology today exists not only in the form of created online communities but also online community frameworks; These allow just about anyone with an idea for a group or community to set up an online network, full with video and audio chats, whiteboarding, discussion forums and groups and all the other good stuff.

This helps create an integrated digital ecosystem which simultaneously addresses both individual and social dimensions of health. In effect this

-- Allows Patients to engage with each other

-- Allows Providers to engage with this medium

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Medical Reference Apps For Android #mHealth

By providing the latest evidence based medicine updates at the point-of-care, Smartphones are proving to be a very important tool for improving quality of healthcare. These inexpensive handheld computing devices allow users to download third party applications (apps) which can perform specialized tasks.

 

5 Free Medical Reference Apps For Android Smartphones which physicians can use everyday for clinical purposes.

1) Medscape : Medscape is a popular web resource for physicians and other health professionals. This is a must have application which provides offline access to clinical reference tools like Drug Reference, Disease & Condition Reference and Treatment Guide, Procedures Reference, Tables & Protocols Reference and Drug Interaction Checker.

2) Skyscape Medical Resources : Founded by a group of Indian innovators, Skyscape is a worldwide leading service for providing trusted medical information via mobile devices. The Skyscape portal provides a number of free as well as paid medical apps for almost all specialties.

3) Epocrates : Epocrates is a publisher of mobile device software applications, designed to provide information about drugs to doctors and other health care professionals. The Epocrates application is the most popular of its kind providing a huge amount of information about pharmaceuticals. Regular use of this app can definitely help reduce errors in drug prescriptions.

4) PubMed Mobile : An uber useful app by the National Library of Medicine, PubMed Mobile allows the user to search its database with over 21 million citations for articles and journals, save articles and searches, view abstracts, and export selected abstracts and citations for future use. NLM also provides a number of other mobile optimized tools and apps. Check the NLM Mobile Gallery here.

5) WebMD : WebMD is the leading health information portal of the United States. It was founded in 1996 by Jim Clark and Pavan Nigam as Healthscape, later Healtheon, and then acquired WebMD in 1999 to form Healtheon/WebMD. The free app provides access to information regarding health and health care, including a symptom checklist, pharmacy information and drugs information

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Practice Websites - Helping Patients

The logical first step to creating rich Databanks of Provider Information is to create identities for Providers in the electronic world. The simplest way to do this is to Create Websites for Doctors, Clinics and Hospitals. This may not necessarily be individual websites for practices which don’t want to invest in one, but can even be simple informative single web pages to fulfill the purpose of creating an identity for them aka http://www.about.me

Such websites can be optimized to convey Services, Location and Contact Information, Medical Notes, Special Cases treated. Such optimization will help in disseminating useful provider information to people looking for the same. This isn’t advertising, it’s a service: people today face many choices and are hampered by lack of information, improving their ability to find information quickly is beneficial to them. Thus a website aids people in locating you and learning more about you.

For those Practices and Practioneers who decide to create web sites, the following tips will help: 

-- On your website, don’t only talk about you, tell the patients more about what diseases and disabilities you treat, what are the latest treatments, generic advice and maybe even help them going to right person if you weren’t involved. 

-- Use tools like interactive patient forms which can be filled before the patient arrives at the center

-- Use query forms on the website so that patients can ask you about their problems and doubts; this gives the feeling to your patients that you are available to them 24/7 without actually being there 

Technical Doctors has partnered with a high quality partner for providing medical practices, doctors and healthcare institutions with feature rich and patient friendly websites at affordable prices. Click to know more.

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Coleman 's 12 Laws of Medicine

Dr Vernon Coleman qualified as a medical doctor in the UK published an excellent series of books on health and wellness. Packed with wise insights and commonsense ; many of these are as true today as when they were first published !

COLEMAN’S 1ST LAW OF MEDICINE
 
If you are receiving treatment for an existing disease and you develop new symptoms then, until proved otherwise, you should assume that the new symptoms are caused by the treatment you are receiving.
 
COLEMAN’S 2nd LAW OF MEDICINE
There is no point in having tests done unless the results will affect your treatment.
 
COLEMAN’S 3rd LAW OF MEDICINE
If the treatment doesn’t work then you should consider the possibility that the diagnosis might be wrong. This is particularly true when several treatments have been tried.
 
COLEMAN’S 4th LAW OF MEDICINE
Screening examinations and check-ups are more profitable for doctors than for patients.
 
COLEMAN’S 5th LAW OF MEDICINE
It is doctors, not patients, who need annual check-ups.
 
COLEMAN’S 6th LAW OF MEDICINE
Hospitals are not suitable places for sick people. If you must go onto one, you should get out as quickly as you can.
 
COLEMAN’S 7th LAW OF MEDICINE
There are fashions in medicines just as much as there are fashions in clothes. The difference is that whereas badly conceived fashions in clothes are only likely to embarrass you, ill-conceived fashions in medicine may kill you. The fashions in medicine have, by and large, as much scientific validity as the fashions in the clothes industry.
 
COLEMAN’S 8th LAW OF MEDICINE
The medical establishment will always take decisions on health matters which benefit industry, government and the medical profession, rather than patients. And the government will always take decisions on health matters which benefit the State rather than individual patients. What you read, hear or see about medicine and health matters will have more to do with the requirements of the pharmaceutical industry and the government, than the genuine needs of patients.
 
COLEMAN’S 9th LAW OF MEDICINE
Doctors and nurses know little or nothing about staying healthy. In particular, doctors and nurses know nothing about food, diet and healthy eating. (Sadly, the same is true of nutritionists and dieticians).
 
COLEMAN’S 10th LAW OF MEDICINE
There are no holistic healers. There are only holistic patients.
 
COLEMAN’S 11th LAW OF MEDICINE
There is no such thing as minor surgery.
 
COLEMAN’S 12th LAW OF MEDICINE
Same patients will always be treated more equally than others.

P.S. Coleman 's 12 Laws of Medicine - something which all doctors should put up on their clinics, so patients keep them in mind when going to a doctor !

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