I’m interested in engaging with your posted question. I would like to know why there is reduction in exchange information or communication that may hinder participatory healthcare and research knowing that technological advancement enhances communication and information. The way I understand the scenario information technology limits person to person interaction that hinders Participatory Healthcare and Research.

I think the watch-word in the discourse is information asymmetry between professionals and patients and not a reduction in exchange of information or communication.New media have certainly led to the reduction in the asymmetry, given that patients come into professional relationships more empowered and armed with information that was previously available to them.

Participatory Medicine is a movement in which networked patients shift from being mere passengers to responsible drivers of their health, and in which providers encourage and value them as full partners.

Health Reform can be achieved  by meaningful activation of patients and providers who practice in a “medical home” environment. Communication between patients and providers will explode in open dialogue, full of followup adjustments and readjustments that usually won’t require office visits. Electronic medical records, routine, daily use of the internet, and extensive use of smartphones will harness the power of computing to eliminate many of the errors and omissions common in today’s health care environment. The business model of fee-for-service will give way to a PMPM system that will support office-based physicians who practice in a patient centered medical home mode.

Reforming health care, first and foremost, must involve activating and engaging patients to become participatory partners.

The key for successful healthcare is an integrated approach, involving predictive, preventive, personalized and participatory medicine. These are: a shift from medical decisions based on 'trial and error' to informed therapeutics based on diagnostics; a shift from a 'disease-centered' to a 'patient-centered' approach; and a shift from a 'reactive' to 'proactive' medical approach.

Placing Health of the people in the hands of the people: patient empowerment and participatory medicine are gaining increasing attention. This requires, besides appropriate sharing of information between patients and healthcare providers, new insights in patient involvement, such as patient-reported outcomes.

Inequalities in access to information exist when one party in healthcare professionals and patients relationship has different information to another that impact cost and benefit. The political, economic, socio-cultural, and technological factors in the health care environment should be examined where professionals and patients relationship exist in relation to information asymmetry. Participatory Healthcare and Research demand transparency.