What is your opinion on digital trends regarding the empowerment of patients to take controll over their health? And furthermore, that their treatment adherence can be optimiszed: Could an APP be helpful? What can a website offer to support?
Well interestingly there are a lot of adherence apps already out there. There is a website called my healthapps where you can review user feedback on a lot of them.
http://myhealthapps.net/search/results/asthma/name/a-z/all/all Asthma coach looks good. They are all free.
So the trick as with all innovation is you have to bring something different or better than what is out there. You should get in touch with the developer to see what research they have done to ensure that it works.
Rebekka, there are many problems associated with patient engagement during the long term treatment of chronic disease, and as a sweeping generalisation, engagement will be harder for patients with a lower socioeconomic status. Inadequate financial resources, poor communication skills, lack of confidence and low health literacy will all contribute to this difficulty.
The idea of creating or using an app to support patient engagement is seductive, but is in reality a part of the 'PLU' (People Like Us) problem. We design systems that we think would be good for us to use, without taking account of the capabilities, skills or resources of those patients most in need of help.
I have a few papers on ResearchGate about this issue, including:
Article Personal Health Records are Designed for People Like Us
Thank you a lot for your input! The social inequity I am aware is very important and to be considered. But sometimes the circumstance you can change or implement somehting don´t offer to all critical endpoints that should be considered.
I also remember a study on health literacy showing, it is the ones with low HL who benefit most of any kind of supoort systems.
Thank you a lot for your great input again!
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