Patient Engagement

Daniel "Danny" Sands, MD, Assistant Professor at Harvard School of Medicine, talks about participatory medicine at the 2015 Patient Engagement Summit in San Diego, CA.

Hazel Tapp, PhD, Associate Director of Research at Carolinas HealthCare System, talks about promoting shared medical decision making processes at the organization.

Douglas Van Daele, CMIO and Associate Director at University of Iowa Healthcare, explains the changes his organization underwent to achieve the 2015 Davies Award from HIMSS.

The trick is in helping people make their own decisions without being overly prescriptive.

As part of the Transforming Clinical Practice Initiative, HHS will dole out $685 million more to help health networks, group practices and other providers drive IT-enabled care coordination, quality improvement and cost reduction.

Lowell General Hospital, a community hospital near Boston, and ClinicalBox, are poised to go full blast into care coordination. "Time is of essence," says its chief nurse executive.

Of the 165,000 apps residing in Apple and Google stores, a surprisingly minute number comprise 50 percent of all downloads. And those that connect to providers are considerably smaller than that in number.

In a new healthcare era, where "patients and their care partners participate actively in decision-making and priority-setting," FDA plans to gain better perspective through its first-ever Patient Engagement Advisory Committee.

Looking to move forward with a patient engagement initiative? Best to talk with the folks who have been ahead of the game for some time. Geisinger Health System's Chanin Wendling is one of those people.

The latest mHealth innovation may also be the most cuddly.