Consumer health informatics
Ferguson, T.
Healthcare Forum Journal 38(1): 28-33
1995
ISSN/ISBN: 0899-9287 PMID: 10154286 Document Number: 6447
Drug-addicted pregnant women in inner-city Cleveland get health information from a voice-mail computer system via touch-tone telephone. People with AIDS manage their own care from a home health workstation. And men with enlarged prostates use an interactive system to help them decide whether to have surgery. These examples and many like them make it clear that the use of cyberhealth systems is not limited to healthcare professionals or to hackers wielding sophisticated hardware. A new generation of medical computing systems is serving the lay population as well as doctors. In fact, a panel of consumer health informatics experts recently predicted that these new systems will become an important part of our effort to reinvent healthcare, turning patients into providers and offering customized health information at the touch of a button. Computer systems will support consumers' desire to play an active role in their own care. The self-care movement goes back at least to the early Seventies. What is different today is the emergence of a whole new generation of electronic tools that make it considerably easier to do what only the most dedicated and diligent could do before.
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