Tromsø Telemedicine and eHealth Conference 2008:
With the patient in the driver's seat
On the first day of this year's telemedicine conference in Tromsø, former doctor Bill Crounse presented the trends that are developing within health care around the world, and visions of what the health service will look like during the next decades. And it looks as though we are already leaving the old way of doing things behind. Health services will be more interactive -- they will come to the patient, rather than patients coming to the health services. Greater responsibility for your own health- Our new health platform, Microsoft Health Vault, has been designed from the patient's point of view. At the moment it is only available in the USA, but we want to pave the way for individuals to build up a database about their health and to share it with those whom they believe need the information, said Dr Crounse from the rostrum. And this is the result of the five major health trends in society that Dr Crounse presented in his address. First, you must take more responsibility for your own health; health services will be viewed more as a product that you can buy; information is available everywhere; and a critical shortage of health staff is developing. - For example, in the USA we are now desperately short of nurses. We must then either import staff or introduce new technology to do the job. The Internet at your bedsideThe secret is that IT products and solutions for the health sector must become more readily available as individual products that can be customized. Today, the health service purchases large and expensive systems, but according to Dr Crounse there is a great deal to save by buying components of software and equipment. - It is much cheaper to buy the parts and adapt them to your own needs. For example, a hospital in Arkansas in the USA has put together communications terminals at all the hospital beds, so that patients can use the Internet, order movies, send email, and chat with friends. - The doctor who started this initiative could not find any systems like this on the market. So they went out and bought touchscreen monitors and Microsoft's Xbox 360. They then reprogrammed them and created a whole new user interface with touch technology that met the patient's needs. Simple, affordable and flexible Read moreYou can read more about Bill Crounse's thoughts on future health services on the health blog http://blogs.msdn.com/healthblog/ |
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