Leveraging Healthcare Technology to Improve Patient-Doctor Communication

Abstract

Patient-doctor communication is a critical element of healthcare interactions that can have a direct impact on the occurrence of medical errors, treatment decisions, and outcomes. Common barriers to patient-doctor communication include patients’ feeling unable to share information, cognitive impairment in patients, and the dominating nature of the biomedical culture in healthcare. The emergence of new healthcare technologies presents an opportunity to improve healthcare communication through both new tools and shifts in practices. Combined with patient-centered care models of communication, user experience design and operational implementations can be leveraged to improve the quality of the relationship between patient and medical provider, information exchange in the dyad, and shared decision-making. The present research adopts a person-centered care model of communication approach to propose design and operational implementations of eHealth technology to improve patient-doctor interactions, resulting in higher quality healthcare and a reduction in negative health outcomes.