Welcome to the Project HealthDesign blog!

This is a place to share and learn about changes in the policy and media landscape that impact the development of personal health records (PHRs), and the field of health and information technology generally.

 

While part of our intended audience is the innovators – including Project HealthDesign grantees – who are dreaming up and designing new services and tools, the topics we’ll cover here are relevant to a much larger group, including policymakers, healthcare providers, insurers, technology vendors – and especially patients or consumers, a category to which we all belong to some degree.

 

Last month at the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) Spring Congress in Orlando, I attended a panel chaired by Project HealthDesign Director Patti Brennan. Representatives from four Project HealthDesign teams shared their progress so far, about six months into the project.

 

I learned about how PDAs can help patients manage chronic pain, and how an open-source program will tap into the power of community to motivate sedentary adults to become more active. I was surprised by grantee JR Kedziora’s observation that different users – all with diabetes – have very distinct preferences in the ways in which they receive health information electronically. And I was intrigued by a group that is using visual vocabulary (the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena is serving as the lead partner on its team) to reach teens on their own terms, using formats that appeal to them. Each project was unique. Despite their variety, they shared several common themes, two of which I’d like to highlight at the launch of this blog.

 

The first is a contagious spirit of blue-sky creativity. You see, I live in Washington,DC, home of the filibuster, partisan gridlock, and bureaucratic red tape. Nearly every discussion of health and IT (and there have been plenty in the last 20 years!) is mired by a review of The Barriers blocking its progress. Where is the technical infrastructure? Who will pay for it? Will doctors use it? Can patients trust it? Project HealthDesign waves those concerns aside – and asks us to imagine, for a moment, what is possible.

 

This seemingly impractical approach is in fact very practical. We need a compelling and concrete vision of what health IT could be. Without an understanding of its value, it is extremely difficult to muster the forces to overcome The Barriers, which are indeed formidable. But if we, including and especially the general public, can grasp how healthcare could be, we have a much better chance of making it so. And the future isn’t as far off, time or technology-wise, as we might think.

A second common theme that came through the panel presentations was the importance of user-centered design, which calls for direct input from users in the development of a product or service. In that spirit, in this blog I will report and opine on topics that I find fascinating and relevant to PHRs, but it’s also up to you to communicate your interests and needs so I can better meet them. Let the conversation begin!

- Lygeia Ricciardi

Comments

[K_Moidu]

The blog would be interesting for expression,Good Start. I would like to read about the progress of the Project Health Design team. Please publish your meeting notes and slides - that would be interesting for the others. Good start..... good luck

[David Eversmann]

Health Care and IT? It certainly can be a cause for alarm and concern, what with HIPPA and computer hackers. Personnal health care information needs to be well guarded, but I would be very interested in receiving health information that would better allow me to manage my personnal health issues. Physicians will never be able to be replaced, but the insurance industry in southwest Ohio is certainly making it tough for Doctors to stay here, they're leaving in droves. ePassport is a hot topic in Social Services, but again it is a question of whether Doctor's and other health care providers will feed into it. I would love to know more about what the Project Health Design team comes up with as it moves along.

[Charles Beauchamp]

Having been a primary care physician in the VA health care system for about 30 years, I understand the time it takes to develop a patient-centered portal such as HealthyVet. This effort should learn from the VA experience. There should, especially, be an understanding of limits to access by the less well to do. Avoid reinventing wheels. Look at how systems such as Kaiser Permanente went their own way with regard to EMR's and how much it is costing them. This is not an EMR but it must link to all EMR's, at least practically speaking. Look at all the money the academic medical centers are wasting reinventing the wheel the VA has already invented. Direct this effort into one that is closely linked to CMS' Vista-Office or be prepared to waste a lot of time and money doing your own thing for a Boutique Care population.

[Jessica Wolfe]

Having been in "institutional healthcare" for nearly two decades, I too embrace the need for consumer-centric design and creativity. I believe movement around PHRs will definitely come from the ground up and am trying to help facilitate that. Would like to hear more about the use of community as a driver and support as I am working on the health and wellness components of a new multigenerational, master planned community in the South and am struggling with the developers over how to incorporate wellness resources in a compelling way that makes both fiscal and behavioral sense.

[Susan Promislo]

Hi Jessica - thanks for your comment. You might want to look at another RWJF-supported program called Active Living by Design, which has funded 25 community partnerships to change the built environment in ways that promote wellness and active lifestyles. More info. is available at http://www.activelivingbydesign.org/.
-Susan Promislo, Communications Officer, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

[Stasia Kahn MD]

Thank you for including me in your blog. As a primary care physician and board member of an early start-up RHIO, I am constantly educating myself on the privacy and security issues of sharing protected health information with my patients. I do believe that passing legislation that reimburses primary care providers who interact with their patients via personal health records tools will go a long way towards increasing the adoption rate of PHRs. I would like to point out that the IRS has been holding up the 501c3 status of multiple RHIIOS for the past 18 months. If the government is truly committed to PHRs, it would seem logical to approve the 501c3 status of these RHIOs.
Thank you again for hosting the blog.
Stasia Kahn MD