The Power of Patient Communication

While catching up on summer reading, I noted that Kaiser Permanente released a truly remarkable study that shows diabetes and hypertension patients who emailed with their doctors got better care and had better health results. The study’s full report is available in the July edition of  Health Affairs (subscription required) and USA Today among other news outlets covered the story too.

It arrives on the heels of a similar study out of Stanford that showed phone calls and emails reminding people to exercise, worked. See this Wall Street Journal article for more. And while we’re on this topic, I’d like to shamelessly plug InfoMedics’ co-founder and Senior Scientist, Dr. Richard Friedman. Dr. Friedman has over 20 years of experience in advancing the use of telecommunications systems to monitor patients with chronic disease, improve medication adherence rates and enable doctors and patients to better communicate about a treatment experience.  We refer to this as Technology Linked Care (TLC) and it’s at the center of what InfoMedics does. This is why I’m so excited to see the Kaiser and Sanford  studies, as they’re  great validation for the Health 2.0  believers (like myself)who have been working from the assumption that technology as a tool can lead to greater efficiency and the holy grail of improved health outcomes.

But wait. This isn’t as easy as it sounds. Despite the flood of online health information, the patients in the Kaiser study improved their health by spending more time, not less with their health professionals. Digital time, but time nonetheless. More important than how this works, is where this works. And the where is at the point of care.

From where I sit, the moral of the Kaiser study is that information technology becomes a powerful health tool when it is linked to the deeply personal experience of being a patient. Being a patient can be a lonely and confusing experience.  Information technology used simply as a 24/7 health news feed does little good. (Can you tell me whether coffee is good or bad for you? I’ve seen about a dozen studies in recent years that all say different things.)

What patients need is personalized guidance by a health professional. And what providers need is an efficient means to provide more of that guidance.  Kaiser has given us evidence that technology can serve these two needs and improve health outcomes.

As always, I welcome your reactions and thoughts.

Gene