patient

Patient engagement is one of the most important parts of healthcare. While healthcare providers can advise and prescribe, it is up to patients to ensure that they stick to the routine given and take the best decisions to improve their health.
It is well known that when persons participate in their health and have an understanding of the process, the likelihood of following the ‘doctors orders’ will be higher. As health technology gets more pervasive, patient portals have become a popular way by which people can access healthcare services.

The question of who really owns patient data is still largely unsettled. Is it the physician who compiled it? Is it the institution in the case of the hospital or a practice with multiple doctors, or are the patients the owners of their information? This is largely the question that has been a barrier to sharing patient records.

Someone recently told me that they went to their dentist’s office for follow-up care and was in the chair being prepped when they were asked about some care options. It all seemed routine until the person was being asked about things to be done that they had not heard of before. They were there for something completely different from what was being presented. Something that, when asked, was not on the card that the dentist was reading from. After some back and forth, it was discovered that it was the wrong patient card.

The long wait for non-emergency healthcare, both privately and publicly, can be frustrating. Such is the extent of the problem that, some years ago, the Ministry of Health began to focus specific interventions on reducing waiting times at public-health facilities. Still, waiting time remains a problem, which I don’t believe we will be able to effectively tackle without the help of technology.

Most medical office management systems include online patient scheduling, and with the increasing number of telemedicine platforms, soon this will become a preferred choice for patients.

JAMAICA IS on the cusp of a digital data revolution in healthcare. I was recently at The University Hospital of the West Indies (UHWI) where my company is implementing the Health Information Management System (HIMS). I was heartened by the enthusiasm of the health workers there when Minister of Health and Wellness Dr Christopher Tufton and his team toured the facility to see the progress of digitisation. I was even more pleased to learn that he, too, was excited by what he saw and had plans to fully digitise public health facilities – both hospitals and health centres.

WITH THE direction in which health and technology are going, it would be prudent for the issue of ownership and access to medical records to be worked out once and for all. With pertinent restrictions of course, access to medical records needs to be less prohibitive to the patient.

The issue of medical records was once again thrust into the spotlight with a recent Supreme Court decision which ordered that parents be given access to their baby's health records within 24 hours.

The hospital had refused to hand them over. Since then, the question is still up in the air as to who owns medical records, prompting Minister of Health Dr Christopher Tufton to seek an opinion from the attorney general.

The recent devastating impact of natural disasters in the Caribbean and North America has underscored the dangers we face here in the region.

The region is no stranger to this as many of us has had to rebuild several times after a natural disaster.

In preparing for these disasters we usually think of the loss of our fixed assets such as cars, homes and other property, but we seldom give consideration to the possibility of the loss of important data.

Last week, my company was involved in the Medical Association of Jamaica's (MAJ) annual symposium, which allowed businesses in the field of health care to display their latest product offerings.

I was pleased to see a few involved in health technology like myself. It tells me that the market is really changing as we are beginning to embrace technology more and more and understanding its importance to the health-care business.