[Re: https://www.hifa.org/dgroups-rss/mhealth-innovate-47-introduction-brendo... ]
Sunanda,
Volunteers and patients provide 99% of long term care (epilepsy, diabetes, angina, ulcerative colitis).
30% to 40% of adults have poor or almost absent literacy (National American Adult Durvey 2993 - And expanded in Barry Weiss's "Health Literacy" written for the American Medical Association).
Children, patients with dementia and ageing, patients who are very ill receive care/ love from neighbours, family and friends (proxies).
There is an accelerating trend, and availability of the required technology, to allow patients to select their own proxies (neighbours, family, friends) to manage their longterm diseases.
Deborah Wachenheim is senior project manager at Open Notes and coordinates regular webinars on proxy/ volunteer access to medical records. These records, increasingly, used on a phone, can be used for many purposes, including ordering prescriptions, booking appointments, communicating with service providers, making insurance claims, travelling with longterm conditions, planning for consultations and managing seasonal fosing of medications - allergies, asthma, hayfever etc and dosing requirements for conditions that require dose variation.
I have cc'd Deborah, who may be able to pass on more information.
R
HIFA profile: Richard Fitton is a retired family doctor - GP. Professional interests: Health literacy, patient partnership of trust and implementation of healthcare with professionals, family and public involvement in the prevention of modern lifestyle diseases, patients using access to professional records to overcome confidentiality barriers to care, patients as part of the policing of the use of their patient data Email address: richardpeterfitton7 AT gmail.com