"Patient engagement is partnering, realizing technology's role with them, continually delivering a tailored experience to their expectations while maintaining your vision, mission, and power of persuasion as a physician." — Dr. Adam Tabriz
Self-Care And Patient Engagement: Why Do We Need Them?!
Patients Choose Self-Care For a Variety Of Valid Reasons; that is Why Healthcare Logistics Infrastructure Must Be Able To Meet Those Essentials!
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the current Healthcare System encompasses a harmonious working environment where workers can collaborate and stream a sound supply of medicine backed by adequate technologies and funding. The modern infrastructure drives the foundation of a system that can appropriately robust health policies and business models.
According to the organization, our interconnected, globalized world needs a logistic infrastructure to control and address global public health.
In technical terms, World Health Organization foresees a solution that requires a Cyber-physical Human System. (CPHS) The kind of logistic infrastructure which offers a digital cloud portal for everyone, every sensor to connect, disconnect and operate in "tandem."
As described, the core necessity for a robust solution is primarily about establishing patient self-care or engagement.
Health Equity, Self-care, And The Healthcare Logistics
Current global health inequity and today's outdated healthcare logistic infrastructure are not coincidental. The currently available solutions still need more interconnectedness, a hybrid workflow model, and seamless interactivity. Those are features that facilitate patient engagement and self-care.
Self-care or patient taking action to improve or sustain healthy living is a complex undertaking under the prevailing circumstances. It demands comprehensive operational planning and workflow streamlining from patient education, evaluation, and action plans. Furthermore, promoting self-care requires patient engagement or coupling it with patient encouragement interventions designed to increase activation with healthy behaviors, such as acquiring preventive care or exercising regularly.
Why Do Patients Want And Should Engage In Self-Care?
According to the WHO, one in every five people in the world is currently lacking access to basic living necessities. That includes access to quality healthcare services.
One way to fight health inequity is by mobilizing the resources for everyone around the globe to self-care. If not provided, the World Health Organization predicts global health human resources a deficit of 15 million before the year 2030. Since, on average, as the agency projects, individuals spend less than an hour a year in medical clinics and healthcare workers. However, in contrast, people spend over 8700 hours a year on self-care. Promoting self-care through well-designed patient engagement programs and logistic infrastructure is vital and cost-effective.
Grassroots interventions such as self-care and patient engagement campaigns facilitate better, personalized healthcare and lower medical care expenditure by helping patients "actively" participate in their medical care.
Engaging patients in self-care pushes them to be self-reliant, efficient, and independent.
Based on the WHO report, patients prefer self-care because it is convenient. That merely means they do whatever it takes to manage their health at home to avoid the inconvenience of traveling to get the care they need, spending thousands of dollars, or dealing with bureaucracy associated with their health coverage. For instance, performing remote self-sampling of stool for colon cancer or the Human Papillomavirus (HPV) for cervical cancer is convenient for patients living in rural neighborhoods and upholds their confidentiality and cost savings.
Patients, by far, prefer self-care to avoid a certain level of stigmatization and discrimination.
The advantages of facilitating self-care are multifaceted, from reducing individual risk factors such as a sedentary lifestyle and smoking to preventative care, including monitoring blood glucose levels and self-monitoring.
Without reservation, engaging patients in their care have good benefits, as it makes healthy individuals a healthy society and lowers healthcare costs. However, patient engagement and self-care need robust logistics which focus primarily on facilitating health equity and maintaining a personalized healthcare model. That is the solution that establishes connectivity among various players in the patient care domain, from search, interaction, and workflow to the point of care. And within that spectrum, every patient can learn, collaborate and participate with their team of healthcare experts to engage in self-care.
One should also remember, despite its necessity, that ensuring a self-care environment and amenities is a challenging task, as it requires a particular logistics infrastructure. It involves bringing various sectors and industries together, including education, legal, and social instances and resources. These instances are often outside the patient care networks; thus, modern logistics can incorporate outside resources in patient self-care through engagement without affecting the independence and privacy of all entities and players. Then again, such logistics operate ideally on Cyber-Physical Human System.
References
- Self-care interventions for health. "Self-Care Interventions for Health," June 30, 2022. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/self-care-health-interventions
- Self-care interventions for health. "Self-Care Interventions for Health," June 30, 2022. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/self-care-health-interventions
- TABRIZ, D. A. "Patient Engagement Amidst Modern Challenges | ILLUMINATION-Curated." Medium, August 12, 2022. https://readmedium.com/patient-engagement-amidst-modern-challenges-f35349dcfcde
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