New Series: Person-Centered HealthCare

HealthWorks Collective will begin a new exclusive ongoing series entitled “Person-Centered HealthCare”. This series will revolve around the person and will focus on health, disease prevention, patient-centric treatment and therapy. It will include wellness and fitness and chronic disease prevention, as well as patient-centric therapy and treatment.

I would like to explore the Quantified Self movement and some of the technology available for motivating behavior changes for a healthier lifestyle. I am interested in mobile apps for chronic disease prevention and support. Hospitals are now rated on patient satisfaction, so it would be interesting to see how some of them are achieving this by increasing their “customer” service. I volunteer for a service dog organization here in Virginia and I think they really are a wonderful help to those with health challenges, so I will write about the special dogs and the special people that train them.

We believe in teaching people to take care of themselves while they are healthy and also empowering them to learn about their condition or illness when necessary.

With an increasing shortage of physicians and an increasing demand on the physician’s time, it makes sense for patients to become more knowledgeable so that they can play an active part in their healthcare.

And with the internet, social media, medical diagnostic sites, mHealth and the abundance of information available, it makes sense to us to present some of the great ideas that we find out there in a special Person-Centered series.

I hope that you will read and enjoy this series, and I hope that some of you will also share your thoughts and contribute to the series. Please comment below with any thoughts at all – ideas, suggestions, questions are all welcome.