The healthcare industry has grappled for years with the idea of a patient-centered model of care. There are many consumer-centric industries to look toward for inspiration and a wealth of digital communication platforms ripe for leveraging, but healthcare leaders need viable ways to shape those seemingly endless possibilities into services that meet the specific and often-complex needs of patients and their loved ones.

“We have a long history in healthcare of designing services that work well for those who are inside the health system rather than for patients and family members,” says Jan Oldenburg (@janoldenburg), who will be addressing consumer-centric healthcare services during her session “What Do Consumers Really Want from Personal Health IT?” on April 14, at HIMSS15 in Chicago. 

Modern American consumers, she says, are deeply immersed in interactive digital communications in most other aspects of their lives — banking, travel, shopping — and they are beginning to demand that their healthcare provider offer an equivalent level of service.

Oldenburg’s session is based on research, interviews, and a patient-provider survey conducted for a book to be published by HIMSS later this year — a companion volume to Oldenburg’s best-selling 2013 HIMSS Book of the Year Engage! Transforming Healthcare Through Digital Patient Engagement (print/eBook/Kindle).

Attendees will get an inside look at what consumers, patients and caregivers want from personal health technologies, and identify critical success factors for building applications and tools that such demand in a fashion both useful and appealing.

So what do patients want?

“Convenience,” says Oldenburg, a senior manager in Ernst & Young’s Advisory Health Care Practice. That includes everything from digital “parking finder” apps and valet services to streamlined follow up care. “Those things make a big difference.” And in-between parking lots and post-care, patients seek empathy, trust and respect, and they are looking for systems and services that ensure that they maintain decision-making authority over their health.

“In the development and design of these digital services the patient is a partner and needs to be treated that way,” she explains. “I hope people leave this session with clear and creative ideas of things their organizations can do to improve the patient experience — from before they reach the hospital or clinic until after they leave.”

What Do Consumers Really Want from Personal Health IT? will be held Tuesday, April 14, in Room S100A at the McCormick Place Convention Center. The session is part of the Provider & Patient Engagement education track. 

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