This is part II of our interview with Jenn Dunphy, Senior Clinical Strategist with Get Real Health, at HIMSS 2017. You can read part I here. Jenn discussed how both patients and providers can improve outcomes through data, and the importance of integrating digital health into patient’s lives and that data into the physician’s workflow.
What do you envision the future of digital health and patient-centered care will be? What will the role of patient-generated health data (PGHD) be in that vision?
The majority of a patient’s health care happens outside of a traditional healthcare setting. It does not occur in the hospital or in the provider’s office. Healthcare happens in a patient’s home and in a patient’s office and wherever that patient is out living their lives. Because of this how can we even discuss a patient centered care model without considering what a patient has to contribute to their care. Without the activities of daily living, their social history, their home device and app information and without their feelings, symptoms and side effects how can we say we are doing patient centered care.
What is the real world evidence that PGHD is improving outcomes?
Chemotherapy symptoms from home being used to dose chemotherapy.
What are motivators for patients to engage? How do you encourage patients to continue providing data?
Patients will only engage if they feel that they are getting something in return so we need to respond to the PGHD to get and keep patients engaged. Auto responses acknowledging receipt of that data and then personalized plans of care, recommendations and encouragement to follow up are imperative.
What are some of the challenges you have had to overcome related to PGHD? What are some of the technical challenges you’ve encountered?
I see provider trust and institution trust being our biggest challenge. I do believe that some of this is warranted. There needs to be better standards and regulations around PGHD. Is the provider responsible for looking at and evaluating all of this PGHD as it is entered, or just when they see the patient?