12 Ways to Put Patients Front And Center

As patients begin to make their presence felt in healthcare, various stakeholders are banding together to find creative ways to bring them front and center.

One such discussion happened virtually through the first-ever Innovation HealthJam, which brought together people with healthcare and technology expertise to brainstorm ideas to improve healthcare. The discussions conducted through eight separate forums inspired the infographic below, which provides 12 potential solutions to difficult problems in healthcare.

For instance, how to address the challenge of patients who show up to the emergency room when all they have are minor ailments? HealthJam's answer is to use telehealth to triage patients from home or retail locations.

Or, how to address long wait times that patients have to endure to get appointments? Perhaps the answer is as simple as creating patient portals for scheduling in the same way OpenTable helps consumers book a table at their favorite restaurant on any given day.

The event was co-sponsored by the American Medical Association (AMA), Center for Technology and Aging (CTA), Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS), Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) and the Personal Connected Health Alliance (PCHA), a collaboration between Continua Health Alliance, mHealth Summit and HIMSS, Intel, Panasonic, University of California Davis and University of California San Francisco (UCSF).

[Photo Credit: iStockphoto.com user francisblack] 

-- By Arundhati Parmar, Senior Editor, MD+DI
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