eWEEK content and product recommendations are editorially independent. We may make money when you click on links to our partners. Learn More.
InterSystems launched the HealthShare Personal Community, a patient engagement software application built on the company’s interoperable HealthShare health informatics platform.
The configurable, vendor-neutral patient engagement software enables health care providers to give patients a user-friendly and comprehensive view of their health information. Patients can view, download, and transmit all or portions of their records to other members of a care team, while an intuitive interface makes it possible for them to review the medical record for accuracy.
Enrollment is handled at the point of care, initiated by a patient or through an external application such as a registration system.
Patients can also assign family members or others on the care team as proxies who can view their records, and they can communicate with any member of their care team connected to Personal Community.
“User-friendliness, or usability is enormously important to any patient engagement solution. Health care information is complex and has its own highly-specialized vocabulary,” Kathleen Aller, director of business development, for InterSystems HealthShare, told eWEEK. “A 2006 study found that 78 percent of U.S. adults have intermediate or lower health literacy levels, so if we truly want to enable engagement, we need make care comprehensible and support shared decision making.”
She noted that health care consumers are very used to working with e-tail sites like Amazon or social networking sites like Facebook.
“The most successful patient-facing online environments mimic these models and span multiple demographic and literacy levels, providing a positive consumer experience, while also addressing the need to create an atmosphere of security and trust,” she said.
Messages can be delivered through Direct or other standards, or directly into the in box of the clinician’s system.
Certified for meaningful use Stage 2, the software supports services such as appointments, prescription refills, provider-patient dialog, and patient education.
Because Personal Community is built on the HealthShare interoperable foundation, it provides patients as well as their authorized representatives a single point of access to electronic medical records in multiple formats and from many care settings.
In addition, the look and feel of Personal Community is configurable to support the heal care organization’s branding and market identity, allowing providers to determine what data and what format to present to patients, the most appropriate enrollment model for the the user population, and the local content and reference materials to complement the overall engagement strategy.
Health providers can also add local news and events, links to community resources, and relevant patient education materials, and a full back-office management portal is included for enrollment, proxy assignment, task management, and customization.
Referral and prescription refill requests, appointment scheduling services, form and document management, and similar administrative services are available to support more efficient patient-provider interactions.
“As value-based payment models take hold and care providers take on greater financial risk for the care of a population, they will need to focus on not only portals or record viewers, but robust service environments, virtual visit models, online education and health coaching, all delivered over a comprehensive patient record that includes the entire cross-functional care team,” Aller said.