An important part of better decision making and compliance is better communications between the doctor and patient. Over 13,000 articles on Pubmed report research on the importance of a quality patient doctor relationship. A quality patient-relationship is critical for ensuring that the patient understands and complies with the physicians treatment plan. Like any other relationship between 2 people – good communications is key.

Patients and physicians can use private social networking for healthcare with simple yet active tools to enable patients and their physician to understand the alternatives clearly,  to have the right information (and not too much of it) in order to make an informed decision and for patients and doctors to communicate their preferences in a clear way.

An example of a social networking application that supports of improved decision making processes is a system designed by University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign professor Ali Abbas.

In the system, users can elect to receive feedback privately from friends or publicly. A Web-based decision-making software application  analyzes the information and offers suggestions.

Any decision making process (and clinical decision making by a patient with their physician is no exception) is made of 3 parts:

1. The different or alternative actions we can take,
2. What information we know to make informed decisions, and
3. Our preferences.

Other contributing factors the system analyzes include “which decision we are really facing, as well as the logic used to make the decision, and the decision-maker, whose alternatives, information, and preferences are incorporated,” Abbas notes.

He says the focus of his research is “capturing peoples’ preferences over multiple attributes.” Abbas stresses that the online system, developed with a U.S. National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development award, will offer “a way to analyze the recommendations that people give you that will be relevant to your daily life.”   For the full article see - Helping People through the Decision-Making Process Using a Web-Based Application

Another example of a social networking applications that supports of improved decision making for patients and doctors is Pathcare  – the private social networking service for a physician and her patients.

Pathcare is an incredibly beautiful and totally simple application that provides the key to solve the biggest problem today for a doctor and her patients.

That problem is stress. Doctors and patients are stressed out.

Doctors are stressed by their patient load – more patients and less time to spend during a visit. They are also stressed by information overload from their electronic health record systems, and patients who come pre-loaded with tons of information from Dr. Google.

Patients are stressed by the healthcare system. No matter how hard their doctor tries – they always feel that they are kept in the dark.

Pathcare is a powerful, personal and private social network for a physician and her patients that  provides  3 things to reduce stress and improve the patient-doctor relationship.

1. Private messaging, Simple, Fast, 10x more effective than email. It’s spam-free and without any of the distractions of your Gmail account – it’s also totally focused on the patient and doctor interface.
2. Personalized updates. A patient can update their physician regarding their condition in 1 click – its as simple as a Facebook status update but without all the friends, parties and likes on pictures getting in the way.
3. Physician branding. Pathcare provides the physician with your own private social network for healthcare. Pathcare is an incredible marketing tool for a private physician or group practice looking for an edge in today’s competitive healthcare market.

Pathcare is free – qualified physicians  can register here

Ann is a high-powered corporate lawyer, juggling work, court appearances, family and friends. Ann is always on her iPhone. The word “downtime” is not in her playbook. Running on a treadmill in the gym is an opportunity to use her phone to get things done at the office, keep tabs on the kids, and make sure her husband walks the dog and log some time on Facebook. Ann is a self-admitted light Facebook user, with all her online social interaction done on the iPhone Facebook app.

Besides a busy lifestyle, Ann also has chronic lower back pain.

Stress can undermine our health.

The relationship between lower back pain and stress is well researched – over 25 years ago first reported here (Depressed mood in chronic low back pain: relationship with stressful life events)

We conclude that previously reported associations between life events and CLBP are a function of the relationship between stressful life events and depressive symptoms, which are prevalent in CLBP.

Smartphones and tablets are part of our life with consumer apps for every conceivable use from reading books (the Kindle App) to practicing jazz patterns (the iRealbook app) and private social networking for healthcare apps that help doctors improve their relationships with patients and reduce their own stress.

Medical apps can identify pills, perform calculations, and help people with diabetes and a fast moving modern life-style control their condition..

The number of new medical apps is growing rapidly with over 13,000 health and medical applications available to consumers and over 5,000 that are targeted to physicians (See Dina ElBoghdady’s June 2012 piece in the Washington Post  ”Healthcare apps pit the FDA against the medical device industry”)

Is there an app out there that can help people like our friend Ann, reduce stress?

Introducing Facebook Home

The family of apps that puts your friends at the heart of your phone. With Home, everything on your phone gets friendlier. From the moment you turn it on, you see a steady stream of friends’ posts and photos. Upfront notifications and quick access to your essentials mean you’ll never miss a moment. And you can keep chatting with friends, even when you’re using other apps.

Will a friendlier phone, a steady stream of posts and photos, chatting and notifications reduce your stress?

Probably not.

More time in email and social media will probably increase your stress.

While you’re busy chatting with friends or tweaking your personal Facebook profile to be the kind of guy you’d really like to be in order to impress women; your work, your studies, your family and other parts of your life are not happening.

And that means that the stress is mounting up.

Cambridge researcher Dirk Trossen created the AIRS app, to use smartphone sensors in order to measure physical changes in the handset user. AIRS records over 60 parameters, including ambient noise, social activity, environmental conditions, and posture.

“You can also track moods expressed through emoticons, and use attached monitors to provide pulse and heart-rate data,” Trossen notes. Essex University researchers have developed a program that analyzes AIRS data and creates a story-inspired visualization on a computer.

The goal of the AIRS mobile app is to get away from the conventional wisdom of stress indicators, such as heart rate, and help increase awareness of how stress can negatively impact us.

“The fact that today’s workforce is likely to work longer than the previous generation increases the importance of stress management as an aspect of general well-being,”

With better self-management, and stress reduction – people like our friend Ann may find a way to be aware of their stress, manage it and reduce or even resolve that chronic lower back-pain.

And that – multiplied by millions of people can translate not only into better health and quality of life but reduced stress and reduced healthcare costs.

See New Scientist online – How smartphones can help us keep stress at bay

But – sometimes software can actually deliver the goods.

We had my sister-in-law and husband over for dinner last night.    Jon is a retired CEO of a large insurance agency and he is considered somewhat of a management science guru in the local Israeli insurance industry.    I was relating some of my war stories with our healthcare clients over  after dinner and Jon said – “you know, maybe you should think of using balanced score card software to help those healthcare practice managers improve their operation”.   I said – “how do you think balanced score cards can improve a healthcare practice?”.   He said – “I bet  that the business requirements for effective management in a big healthcare practice are not too different from the insurance business I used to run”:

• Identify  customers (patients) at-risk
• Audit current operational(clinical) practices
• Investigate data quality issues,
• Explore inequalities in customer (patient) care

I thought – “maybe Jon is onto something there” and filed that thought away for future reference.

Information technology is often driven by political agenda and enterprise business requirements. The healthcare system is no exception to this rule.

Large scale EHR systems are priority projects for a  healthcare provider because they help improve operational efficiency ( reducing time to bill and collect, reducing the amount of  resources required to process a prescription, reducing the amount of paper, just to name a few).

But – what about making it easier for the patients?  Can information technology and modern software help a physician identify  patients at-risk by providing him with comparative information like the balanced score cards that my brother in law mentioned?

Software that helps reduce patient risk, improve quality of care and reduce inequality

Researchers from the University of Manchester  have a developed software system which analyzes how many patients in a practice have suffered from different conditions over a particular time period and identifies those who might require hospital treatment in the future.

Motivated by a drive by the UK NHS  to improve efficiency of treatment and reduce hospitalization costs, the researchers believe the software will help physicians identify patterns earlier and reduce the number of costly hospital admissions for conditions like strokes by providing early intervention treatments.

The system, which is running in a beta program at a North West hospital, is one of a number of health innovations that were showcased at the European Healthcare Innovation Expo 2013,  that took place in London in March 2013.

So what does it do exactly?

The University of Manchester Collaborative Online Care Pathway Investigation Tool (COCPIT)  enables medical professionals to track a patient’s progress through the healthcare system and identify where care diverges from guidelines.

“Our researchers have created an innovative software tool that enables health professionals to better understand the provision of healthcare services and opportunities for quality improvement,” says Manchester’s John Ainsworth.

“This system will improve healthcare planning by identifying inconsistencies and inequalities in healthcare provision and allow healthcare professionals to specifically focus on illuminating social inequalities in care. The tool will aid assessment of the clinical outcomes and economic impacts of intervention strategies and potential changes to care pathways intended to improve patient care and public health.”

Using the tool GPs, health professionals and commissioning organisations explore and analyse electronic health records. The tool allows physicians to:

• Identify  patients at-risk
• Audit current clinical practice,
• Investigate data quality issues,
• Explore inequalities in care.

Mr Ainsworth said: “By making it easier to explore electronic health records, COCPIT helps clinicians and managers to understand patient populations, target service delivery, reduce work repetition and improve patient care.”

For the full article see New software could help cut hospital admissions