Over the past several years the majority of us have begun to take on more financial responsibility when it comes to healthcare. With an overall focus on cost reduction within the healthcare industry and among those who provide insurance, this trend is likely to continue in the coming years. As a result, many of us are now taking an increasingly active role in our healthcare decisions, which requires learning more about the various healthcare issues and ailments we are faced with over the course of our lives.

In response, a huge volume of healthcare information has become available through the internet. Because most people have not received any medical training, there is really no reliable way for us to determine good information from bad. Those of us who build web sites can create richer user interfaces as well as new online platforms and tools, but have little or no control over the quality of information that is delivered through them.

There is a desperate need for those with proper medical training to play a more active role in creating and vetting online healthcare content and tools. This in turn may change the way healthcare providers operate as time needs to be dedicated to keeping abreast of the information available online, and guiding patients to what is accurate and relevant.

My question is which healthcare organizations will make the changes and investments needed to adopt new online tools and platforms such as patient-accessible, portable electronic medical records. Where will the incentives for change come from and who will foot the bill?

I eagerly look forward to watching all of this evolve, and hope to play a part in developing web-enabled tools that facilitate new modes of interaction between providers and patients.

Maybe in the not-so-distant future, an online tool I have helped develop will allow parents to avoid the wasted hours at the doctor’s office and pharmacy to obtain yet another Amoxicillin prescription for their child’s Nth ear infection of the year (not that I speak from experience).

This entry was posted on Friday, April 25th, 2008 at 9:23 am and is filed under Health Care. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.