Patients want HIT to transform their healthcare experience
Patient Safety Monitor Alert
May 20, 2009
A new study indicates that patients are eager for healthcare information technology (HIT) to transform their healthcare experience, much as the Internet has changed how they find information and relate to others, reports The Boston Globe. A new report in the June Journal of General Internal Medicine details the study done by some Boston researchers and funded by the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation.
Researchers asked a group of 82 participants, made up of physicians and patients who were all "frequent Internet users," a series of questions about what kind of access to their health records they wanted, what amount of privacy they expected, and what they hoped to get out of greater integration of technology with healthcare. In the future, patients hope to be able to use HIT to find out more health-related information on their own and perhaps avoid visits to the doctor when appropriate.
