Healthcare Personnell’s Expectations of a System for Sharing and Using Patient-Gathered Data

Background

Personal health-sensors and devices are quickly entering the market, answering people with diabetes’ needs for self-management aids. This has led to an increasing amount of patient-gathered health data, which we foresee will be important in meetings between healthcare personnel and patients. Building on the previous FI-STAR project [1], we address this issue in the current Full Flow project.

Methods

Prior to testing an in-house developed system that allows people with diabetes to share their self-gathered data during consultations (se figure below), we queried healthcare personnel (n=17: 12 GPs, 4 nurses, and 1 nutritionist) about their perceptions of, and suggestions for, the proposed system.

Results

All of the healthcare personnel informants reported that they expected the designed system to be useful during consultations. Ten of them gave specific suggestions about how they expected the system to function, including:

1. possibilities for remote consultations;
2. support for keeping track of carbohydrates types, not only amount;
3. support for keeping track of lipid levels;
4. automatic data transfer from apps, e.g. Strava, and devices, e.g. glucose meters and insulin pens;
5. support for all kinds of mobile phones;
6. integration of this system’s functions with electronic health record systems (EHR);
7. highlighting changes in patients’ health since last consultation;
8. transfer of consultation notes and hospital system information into the patients’ app to provide them with tailored recommendations for follow-up at the next consultation.

More details about the system and results can be read in [2].

Conclusion

Healthcare personnel are positive toward a system using patient-gathered data, and they contribute with creative and specific suggestions for how such systems should work.