Patients

Your General Practitioner or regular attending doctor knows you from when you were a toddler and has records about all your vaccinations and your entire medical history.

But what happens when you move to another region, or travel to another country? What if you see a specialist? Health care has become more complex and people get health care in more than one facility.

Connecting the health information systems used by health professionals for joined access by other authorised health professionals is a major step towards better health care.

Having access, as a patient, to your own health records managed by your health professionals, gives you a stronger voice in the management of your care. The insights you gain will enable you to hold more effective conversations with your health care professionals and to make better decisions. Empowered patients are also more motivated to follow treatments, adapt their life style, focus on prevention and they have better care experiences.

There are practical benefits too, e.g. patient web portals sometimes enable digital communication with your health professional, or give you the opportunity to order repeat medication, book appointments, or receive reminders on activities you have to undertake.

More recently, you can easily install apps on your smartphone to boost your wellness and life style habits (e.g. running trackers, food and weight monitoring, or blood pressure measurement).Health data that you collect in this way, of your own accord, give you more insights and motivation.

How wonderful would it be if your health professionals would be able to access this data as well?

But if your smartphone apps are poorly interoperable, it will be hard to exchange data with the more traditional health data systems.

Patient-generated data provides:

• a unique, detailed and valuable insight into factors that may cause disease
• help you to manage your health better
• provide very detailed information about how effective different treatments are.