What Empowered Patients Need: Empathy, Time, And Attention

Empathy, time, and attention are what opinion leader e-patients need most from their physicians, and that’s the most important outcome they get from an equal-level patient-doctor relationship. Cooperation between technology and healthcare is not enough on its own: the most decisive factor is the return of the human touch and reciprocal communication. That’s the main finding of the latest study of The Medical Futurist Institute, entitled Opinion leader empowered patients about the era of digital health: a qualitative study, published in the British Medical Journal. The case for e-patients In the last decade, rapid technological advancement has resulted in a shift towards digital health in medicine. This shift is theorized as a cultural transformation of how disruptive technologies providing digital and objective data accessible to both caregivers and patients leads to an equal level physician-patient relationship with shared decision-making and the democratization of care. Has this change already started? Where does it stand at the moment if it already has? What does a doctor-patient partnership look like? What do physicians and patients need to do differently in the digital age? What are their greatest challenges? The Medical Futurist Institute (TMFI) had plenty of questions regarding the assumed shift in the behavior of patients and doctors due to easily available health technologies. For questions concerning the patient’s side, TMFI conducted a qualitative st...
Source: The Medical Futurist - Category: Information Technology Authors: Tags: Digital Health Research Empowered Patients future Innovation partnership patient-doctor patient-doctor communication technology Source Type: blogs