Wendy Swanberg, Communications Coordinator, Project HealthDesign National Program Office
More than 200 people signed up for last week’s webinar, "From the iPhone to the EMR: Can patients' personal health data help improve their clinical care?” to learn about the latest work by Project HealthDesign’s grantee teams. Co-hosted by Stephen Downs of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) and Patricia Flatley Brennan of the National Program Office, the webinar set a wider lens on the growing interest in weaving patient-generated data into the matrix of clinical health care.
Steve Downs explained that as part of RWJF’s Pioneer Portfolio, Project HealthDesign was created to stimulate innovation in the area of personal health records. “We laid out a vision where your medical record would serve as a platform” he explained, “and then lots of third-party apps could be tailored to your specific needs.” The project’s five research teams took that vision and created applications tailored for patients with chronic conditions, from asthma to obesity to Alzheimer’s disease.
Project director Patti Brennan described what might be the most significant finding to arise from the project, the discovery that information from patients’ daily lives -- data about things like diet, mood and stress level – can play an important role in managing health care. These “Observations of Daily Living,” or ODLs, became central to the grantees’ research projects and represent a significant, new category of patient-generated data. Brennan also introduced a short video where members of each project team illustrated their projects’ findings and challenges.
Project investigator Katherine Kim described how her team’s iN Touch application helped young people struggling with obesity to become more engaged in managing their health and lifestyle. Dr. Stephen Rothemich outlined findings of his team’s BreathEasy project, showing how ODLs can provide clinically useful information and in some cases can lead to changes in diagnosis or therapy.
Finally, National Advisory Council member Dr. Michael Christopher Gibbons spoke eloquently of the critical role personal health records can play in a rapidly evolving society, where new approaches are needed to tend to the needs of a growing population of seniors, minorities, immigrants and the underserved.
If you registered for the webinar but weren’t able to view it, follow this link and log in with the email address used at registration.
