How do doctors and patients relate through mHealth?

The Canadians are ready to face the health changes, or at least the data say. According to a survey by Infoway in 2013, 89% of the citizens believe it is important that the healthcare system should benefit from the use of digital tools. At the time there were 45,000 users of the electronic medical record (EMR) in the ten provinces and 90% of these citizens assured that the experience of having access to their own medical information on the net was positive.

However, there is still a long way to go. If the Canadians had access to digital health services, the citizens would be very interested in using them, according to the survey:

Source: Harris / Tenth Annual Tracking Survey by Infoway, March 2014

The use of the Electronic Medical Record is also growing amongst the medics. In February 2013, 64% of Canadian family doctors used the EMR to make and recover clinical notes on the patient, 23% more than in 2010.

Some of the main provinces in Canada and leading health organisations have started to invest in mobile digital solutions. Their reference is the conclusions drawn from small projects and plot trials, which indicate that these kinds of initiatives and patient telemonitoring improve clinical efficiency, access to healthcare and cost-effectiveness, although larger scale research is needed according to the authors of the White Book.

From the patient’s viewpoint, users feel comfort and connectivity. Furthermore, the use of ICTs in health is becoming safer. Research in this field has also shown that the benefits are positive in terms of access, quality and productivity. The nature of mobile ICTs allows new forms of collaboration and involvement between patients and the healthcare team.

In fact, the present use being made of the apps is creating digital links between patients, carers and health providers. In this sense, Infoway believes that:

• The future of healthcare will be clearly influenced by the doctors and health organisations’ need to involve patients, who already have considerable mastery of ICTs and hope to be able to have multidevice access to their personal health information and their medical team.
• Patients and their carers ask to have online access to basic administrative processes, such as the renewal of prescriptions, appointments with the doctor or communication with the professionals of the team attending them.
• The mobile phone will become the favourite channel of patients in interacting with their doctors and to get their personal health information thanks to their comfort, their permanent connection, the variety of platforms and devices for access and for the fully expanding eco system of apps.

In order that all future opportunities might be materialised, the confidence that sectors and patients have in the mobile apparatuses and apps is fundamental. The guarantee of fulfilling a regulation for mobile solutions involved in diagnosis is one of the pending challenges in Canada.

Call to action

Despite everything, most Canadian healthcare institutions are not yet ready to introduce these kinds of mobile solutions to patients or to incorporate patients’ personal devices and analyses in the systems.

Infoway therefore encourages healthcare organisation to continue to work on implementation, as the system will be transformed and sustained from the ICTs, from the new healthcare models and from improved patient involvement. This is the reason for the call to action to the Canadian organisations to include mHealth in their information systems, in seven steps:

1. To expand the scope and leadership of the ICT organs of government to supervise the process of implementing mobility.
2. To develop a mobile strategy as part of a broader roadmap in digital health.
3. To ensure that the future implementations of solutions for healthcare include options of interfaces for mobile users, both for clinical use and for use by patients.
4. To invest in a strategic focus in different stages to achieve perfect integration of the mobile devices in the organisation’s information systems.
5. To create a series of policies and standards for managing the privacy of mobile devices and the apps used by the doctors and patients of the organisation.
6. To line up the use of mobile devices and apps with the regulatory policies and directives of the public agencies dealing with citizen safety.
7. To consider making a selection of the most appropriate and safest mobile solutions so that doctors might use them with their patients.

As the ICTs spread, according to Canada Health Infoway, there will be many more opportunities for the Canadian healthcare community to implement strategic ICT initiatives that allow some of the country’s most urgent health problems, such as chronic disease and ageing, to be dealt with proactively.

Further information

•    Mobile Health Computing Between Clinicians and Patients. White Paper (Full Report), Canada Health Infoway, March 2014
•    Other reports from the same series in Infoway.