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If the new Internet technologies promise anything it's a brave new world of interaction and collaboration, where people who have up to now been isolated or locked into a linear world of passing information back-and-forth at arms length can at last communicate with each other online and in real time.
In the healthcare field this concept is behind such informational sites as WebMD and is even more central to newcomers such as Revolution Health, which are trying to leverage so-called Web 2.0 services to carve out a new form of consumer-driven healthcare model.
Exactly what it means for the more traditional doctor-patient relationship is harder to fathom, however. Physicians are, rightly, focused on how these technologies can help them deliver better healthcare to their patients for at the least the same, if not lower, cost. While the consumer-based advantages are easier to deduce, that's not so for the doctor-patient link.
Oh, there are all sorts of promises of good things to come. Just wait and see, people say, these new technologies will revolutionize the practice of healthcare and yadda, yadda, yadda.
However, not many of these relate to the way healthcare is done today.
A recent article in the American Journal of Managed Care provides some real evidence of what that relevance could be. It indicates there are measurable benefits to be had in the treatment of diabetes through what the paper terms "telephonic interventions".
That's right. The telephone. Remember that technology?
A study done by a company called Healthways found that diabetic patients were much more likely to adhere to suggested testing procedures when someone got on the phone and prodded them compared to people who didn't get this kind of contact.
According to the article:
All members who received calls achieved statistically significant improvement in testing compared with members who did not receive calls. Increasing the numbers of calls was associated with increasing percentages of testing rates and is consistent with a dose-response relationship between telephonic activity and adherence. Members with high disease burden benefited even more from the diabetes intervention.
Reports consistently show that, despite the increasing importance of such Internet-based services as email, the telephone is still the preferred method for people to get in touch with their doctor. It seems there is still much value in the immediacy and personal touch in that form of communication.
Obviously, if the Healthways study proves out, it also has value in improving the health outlook for at least some of the patient population.
The challenge for the crop of new Web 2.0 technologies is not in carving out new ways of providing healthcare, at least not yet. It's finding a way to be relevant in the current hierarchy of healthcare delivery.
The Healthways study shows there is value in interaction. Now we have to find if there's a 21st Century, Web-based method that's at least as good as what 19th Century technology can deliver.
By Brian Robinson, GHIT Contributing Writer
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