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EHR Standards News & Events

New Government Schemes & initiatives indicate a very important role for IT in Healthcare in India. Are your ready for the future?

Reviewing the role of Information Technology (IT) in healthcare in India, we could say that we have not been successful in achieving the fullest of our potential. We still lack the enabling role of information and communication systems in healthcare to optimize wellness management in India. If we are to look deeper, we are yet to integrate the marvels of modern communication devices and technology with Indic medication and wellness practices like Yoga, Ayurveda and Naturopathy for enhanced and personalized treatments.

However, the proposed tech-integrated initiatives from the Government of India such as Indian EHR standards, Digital Information Security in Healthcare Act (DISHA), Mental Healthcare Act 2017(NMHA) and National Health Policy 2017 appears to change things for good and arrive as a welcoming change in the healthcare sector. The Chief Information Officer of Asian Institute of Medical Sciences shared his thoughts to Elets News Network on the tech integration with medical facilities. Here, we have summarized the excerpts for you.

Mr. Lakshman shares that one of the most notable initiatives with respect to technology in healthcare has been the Electronic Health Records. In initiatives such as E-health, the Information Communication Technology (ICU) is used to deliver better healthcare to a wider audience through efficient monitoring and achieve better availability and affordability of healthcare.

He notes that the penetration of mobile devices and internet connectivity has surged over the couple of years and this is an advantage for technology to make health records of patients available through messages, call or web-based services. The scheme comes with an intention to pave way for the accessibility of online health records, health consultation, medicine supply-chain management and patient information exchange. The Indian Government intends to roll out a unified way to manage and provide health information to hospitals, clinics and wellness practitioners in the country.

He added that the creation of an integrated health information exchange is to strengthen the development of standards compliant electronic health records for Indian citizens and ensure interoperability of the records across the country. The benefits of such an exchange include reduced expenses on healthcare, increased health reporting, reduced paperwork, better and customized wellness agendas and treatments, pan-Indian accessibility of health data, seamless deployment of healthcare services and more.

Mr. Lakshman also brought out the role of Ayurveda, Naturopathy, Yoga and other alternative medicines in Indian healthcare. He stated that there has been a paradigm shift in the way healthcare and wellness is perceived. With increased stress due to work, current lifestyle and lack of exercise, there is a dire need for better and optimized healthcare services in India. Today, it is not just about curative treatment agendas but preventive wellness practices. That is where AYUSH comes into action.

AyushEHR from HealtheLife

At HealtheLife, we believe that it we can pave way for better health and wellness agendas for patients and individuals by integrating electronic health records with AYUSH practices. More than being an alternative medicine, AYUSH can help in the better diagnosis and treatment of ailments and diseases with the integration to individuals’ electronic health records.

Spas, wellness resorts, Ayurveda and Naturopathy clinics can now make use of patient data to offer better treatments and offer tailored patient care. With the government recognizing the role of electronic health records and coming up with tech integration schemes, it would be the right time to leverage the potential of electronic health records for AYUSH wellness practices using AyushEHR. Talk to us to know how we can help you.

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Knowledge

How an EHR platform like EHR.Network can help Nutrition experts make their work more meaningful

Patient care in hospitals and clinics don’t just stop with diagnosis and treatment. What follows after these two processes is equally important – adequate nutrition. Nutrition and adequate supplements of it is one of the crucial factors that influence the recovery of patients. A report from the National Institute of Health revealed last year that malnutrition in patients has been one of the major reasons for patient re-admissions and cropping up of concerns like pressure ulcers.

To eliminate such instances and pave way for better patient recovery, one needs to standardise the supply and intake of nutritional supplements. This can be intervened and resolved only when a standard is set for the monitoring and supply of adequate supplements to patients.

And what could be a better way than resorting to the use of electronic health records. Acting as a centralised portal for doctors and clinicians to retrieve patient information for better diagnosis, an EHR can also act as a platform for dietitians and nutritionists to plan the intake of adequate supplements for health and recovery. An EHR has all the crucial information and metrics required for wellness deliverance and this access to dietitians will help them plan the right supplements at varied stages of patient recovery.

Generally, a dietitian would need the following parameters to make a better and an informed chart on patient recovery and an electronic health record provides with all the necessary information on –

  • Demographics of the person
  • Medication
  • Supplements being provided
  • Requirement of special supplements
  • Symptoms and diagnosis
  • Side effects or allergies to certain medications and supplements

This association of a dietitian or a nutritionist with an EHR also acts as a liaison between them and doctors for coordination on patient health improvement statuses and modification of nutrition intake depending on each stage. During medication, it is highly likely that patients lose or gain weight invariably, eat in meagre portions and become stressful. Access to the electronic health records of patients allows the dietitians to anticipate the requirement of diverse types of supplements, forecast a recovery chart and tailor the intake of supplements for each patient they take care of.

One of the major concerns dietitians face with patients is they don’t come back for follow up sessions for recovery monitoring. It is a general mentality of patients to do away with either medication or nutritional intake once they reach a particular stage of recovery. All that dietitians or nutrition suppliers want is the patients to be in touch with them. The EHR makes it easy for them to know the status of the patients frequently and patients can consult their dietitian anytime with better information on their health and information on diagnosis.

MLM (Multilevel Marketing) companies are also some of the finest providers of organic nutritional supplements and one of the most practical ways they can reach out to their audiences is by associating with an EHR platform. The association would make it easy to provide timely access to nutrition supplements and come back for recommendations and resupply at frequent intervals. To personally know how EHR.Network can help you, get in touch with us for a conversation.

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Ayurveda & EHR Knowledge

Ayurveda and modern healthcare – Part I : Science and philosophy behind the alternative approach to health and well being

It is believed that when most part of the west were attempting to understand cultivation and farming, we – as Indians – were working on scientific theories on cosmos, life, spirituality, health and more. We were ahead of the rest of the world in the early ages of civilisation till we started losing out during colonisation. This advancement is evident in some of the sacred texts of the Hindu mythology and well preserved and documented knowledge that are still available. The yogis and the saints have documented their basic(and often in line with our modern understanding) thoughts on creation, life, cosmos etc. These have been preserved through generations and are used a source of knowledge even to this day

One such major contribution has been on health and well being of humans, where the stress is on holistic wellness often involving a combination of medicines, spiritual practices and meditation. All these learnings have evolved into a highly organised and structured system of medication and wellness practices called Ayurveda – or the Veda of life.

Apart from being the most popular healthcare practice in India, Ayurveda also found its application and research from people around the world. At around 400AD, Ayurveda was translated into Chinese and 300 years later, it attracted Chinese scholars to the Nalanda University for research and study purposes[1].

The Philosophy Behind Ayurveda

Ayurveda is based on factors or parameters like health, diseases, disorder and balance and not on pathology and physiology alone . It is based on the principle that diseases arise from the imbalances among the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual being and that, to be free from diseases, there should exist a harmony amongst physical actions, thoughts, feelings, and the very purpose of healing.

It is an amalgamation of concepts and practices from medical arts, behavioral/physical sciences, and the six Indian philosophical systems – Vedanta, Mimamsa, Vaisheshika, Nyaya, Yoga and Sakhya. The central belief surrounding Ayurveda is that life is the confluence of senses, mind, body and spirit. The functioning of the life (in any form) revolves mainly around the interactions of three primary energy systems or doshas:

Kapha – it signifies the physical and structural aspects
Pitta –it signifies the intellectual and trans-formative aspects
Vata – it signifies the energetic, dynamic and non-material aspects of nature

As per Ayurveda, vata takes care of movement, blood circulation, respiration, creativity, speech and the nervous system. Kapha takes care of anabolic systems and processes such as fluid secretion, binding, potency, lubrication, compassion, patience and fluid balance. Lastly, pitta takes care of metabolism, digestion, body temperature, courage, complexion, vision, cheerfulness, intellection and other trans-formative processes.

Human life is sustained by the interactions of these three energies and when there are imbalances in the energies (which differ from one person to another depending on their Prakruti, their basic template at the time of creation), it manifests as ailments or diseases. Ayurveda looks at both the subjective and objective aspects of ailments and individual characteristics to restore balances in these energies and prepare wellness and treatment agendas.

In this article, we have tried to give an introduction to the basic philosophy behind Ayurveda. We will be exploring deeper into how Ayurveda treats your diseases and ailments in future posts. . If you would like to be kept updated on such articles in the future, please subscribe to our monthly newsletter.

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Knowledge

Understanding Clinical Information Management – Essential differences among HIS, PHR, EMR & EHR

When it comes to a few certain technical terms in the field of healthcare, there seems to be a few misconceptions and confusions. With the onset of digital technology, a number of new technologies and terms have cropped up in healthcare IT further adding to the misconceptions. Today, a lot of people confuse between an HIS, PHR, EMR and EHR. For most of us, these invariably mean more or less the same thing. However, they are not. These terms are often misinterpreted and considered interchangeable. There are subtle differences among them and these subtleties are what define their role in healthcare delivery.

This article is all about bringing to light the differences among the three distinct concepts and helping you leverage the potential of each for your Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy wellness centers. Read on.

Personal Health Record(PHR)

PHR is a tool to collect, track and share past and current information about your health or the health of someone in your care. Your PHR may save you the money and inconvenience of repeating routine medical tests and give medical care providers more insight into your personal health. It can further help you become responsible for making decisions about your health.

However, please be aware that medical records(EHR & EMR) and your personal health record (PHR) are not the same thing. Medical records contain information about your health compiled and maintained by your healthcare providers. A PHR is information about your health compiled and maintained by you. You can read more about PHRs here.

Hospital Information System(HIS)

On the other hand, an HIS stands for Hospital Information System! This is a more clearly understood concept when compared to EHRs, EMRs & PHRs and revolves basically around hospital management and optimized administration. Hospital Information Systems involve computers and applications for the management of a clinic, nursing home or a hospital’s everyday operations. Modern systems allow for automation of several redundant tasks and there are several providers of this platform. Some of the functionalities of a hospital information system include the following:

  • Patient registration and scheduling of appointments
  • Billing
  • Manage materials and supply-chain with 3rd party vendors and dispensaries
  • Laboratory, cardiology and radiology operations
  • Handle staffing and HR functions
  • Hospital CRM functions such as send automated emails on appointments, newsletters and more

Electronic Medical Record(EMR)

EMR stands for Electronic Medical Record. An EMR is the digital version of the paper charts related to health you find in clinics and doctors’ offices. An Electronic Medical Record contains details on the information collected by doctors and practicing physicians during your session of diagnosis and is used by them to deliver better healthcare services.

EMRs are designed to help the healthcare organization improve their internal record management and provide easy access them during ongoing care and repeat patient visits. EMR data is not inter-operable with EMR of the same person from other applications and so is not very helpful for the long term health management of the person

Electronic Health Record(EHR)

If you didn’t know, EHR stands for Electronic Health Record and is something that goes beyond an EMR. An EHR manages your health information following open standards (country specific and International) and hece the data from different EHR applications are inter-operable. EHRs can potentially contain lifelong details and information about a patient but differ from EMR in the fact that they contain reports from all clinicians or doctors involved in the patient’s healthcare.

EHRs allow not just one doctor or physician to use the information mentioned in the report for diagnosis purposes but anyone with who you intend to share the report or have access to your report. It is most effective when implemented as a centralized portal on the cloud (like the EHR.Network) that doctors and clinicians can have a comprehensive look at your medical data and get insights on earlier diagnosis, treatment agendas, scan reports and charts, side effects, blood pathogens and more. We have dedicated an entire blog post on EHRs and you can find the article here.

So, these were the basic differences among the four key terms you should know for your clinic or wellness resort. Interchanging technical terms can give rise to consequences and confusions and to stay clear of those, it’s better to know the basics. If you need any assistance in setting up an EHR in your hospital, clinic or wellness center, you can get in touch with us. You can also contact us to book a demo session of AyushEHR, the EHR solution for Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy.

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Knowledge

Top 5 Advantages of Electronic Health Record(EHR) Solutions

On our previous post, we saw an introduction to what an electronic health record is all about. And in this post, we would shed more light on the advantages of electronic health record solutions. While EHRs have been widely adopted in Western medicine, their full potential is yet to be completely leveraged by Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy healthcare practices to deliver a comprehensive wellness service that will significantly improve a person’s health. So if you are clinician practising Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy and looking to improving healthcare standards, here is why you should incorporate electronic health record solutions into your system.

Precise Documented Information

With electronic health records, you have with you precisely documented information about your patients and their medical history. With digitized documents, you are making it easier for your patients and other clinicians to retrieve patient information regardless of location and time. With EHR, the chances of errors caused by human intervention or word-of-mouth communication are also averted. Besides, electronic health records allow doctors and wellness practitioners to easily look into patients’ health history instantly and look at any information such as allergies or side-effects that would stall or impact their treatment agendas. Sandhya Pruthi – the Managing Director of Mayo Clinic, Minnesota, claims that with EHR, she could easily pull up test results in an exam room with her patients. She also adds that she could instantly verify if they have had past procedures or exams and even show her patients the imaging of theirs tests and screenings.

Better Diagnosis

Being a centralized portal, electronic health records keep updating after any change is made by clinicians to a patient’s health record. This allows doctors or other clinicians to get a comprehensive look at the patient’s medical history and diagnose diseases better and come up with more effective treatment agendas. When a wellness practitioner looks at an EHR, he or she could easily understand the procedures undergone by the patient without having to rely on patient’s oral information or a paperwork report that could be obsolete. This immensely reduces the chances of errors in treatment practices.

Data Analytics

Electronic health records are all about consistent updation of medical data and patient record.
This constant generation of data allows for effective analysis of the data to come up with both prescriptive and predictive responses. Preventive health is one of the major advantages provided by EHR solutions, wherein clinicians can easily tell of any potential outbreaks during epidemics such as flu or if it is a right time for health screenings, preventive therapy or more instances.

Reduced Medical Errors

It is scary to think about an error in the field of medicine and that is one of the major reasons why electronic health records are like the optimum solutions. Paperwork and files can be easily lost or misplaced giving rise to misplaced patient information. Or, instances as simple as illegible handwriting can also stand as a barrier in delivering the right healthcare treatment. Situations like these are at a greater chance of giving rise to medical errors, which could be life-altering for patients and practitioners. EHR tremendously reduce the chances of such occurrences, paving way for a smooth healthcare deliverance. Regardless of the number of consultations from different doctors and clinicians, information on these digital records is instantly updated with precise patient information.

Streamline workflow

One of the biggest advantages for owners of hospitals and clinics lies in the operations and management of the place. By going digital, electronic health records make it easy for you to streamline your tasks and workflow processes and clear clutter in your premises by replacing paper with digital records stored on the cloud. It is also time-saving as your clinicians can now spend more time on analyzing patient data rather than filling them out. Efficiency of operations can be significantly increased and there can be clarity in day-to-day operations.

These are the preliminary sets of advantages electronic health records offer to patients and hospitals. To know more about how electronic health records can be beneficial, check out this quick video. To know how AyushEHR can personally benefit your resort, hospital or clinic get in touch with us today.

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Ayurveda & EHR Knowledge Yoga & EHR

Compelling Reasons Why Ayurveda, Yoga & Naturopathy Needs to adopt Information Technology

Globally, there are over 500,000 practitioners of Ayurveda, Yoga & Naturopathy. This statistics makes it one of the most prevalent systems of medicine and in India, its significance is something phenomenal. Despite its prominence, a more digitized and streamlined way patients’ data is stored, managed and retrieved is still missing. On the contrary, western medicine have integrated chests of patient information systems that is available to clinicians and doctors, allowing them to virtually know an individual’s medical record. However, Ayurveda still awaits a call for integrated technologies and solutions. On this article, we will delve into why Ayurveda, Yoga & Naturopathy needs to adopt information technology to bring about significant changes.

The 3 most widely used tools in healthcare and their advantages are as below

Hospital Information System(HIS)

One of the major advantages of integrating HIS with Ayurveda, Yoga & Naturopathy healthcare practices is that it paves way for seamless everyday operation. It allows clinicians to set reminders, tasks and alerts for patients and enable better engagement with them. For instance, sending out appointment reminders a day prior to the actual date, send follow-ups through emails or phone calls, reminders to schedule appointment for patients’ next visit, and more.

Besides, it also fosters a better supply-chain ecosystem, where your inventory of supplements are better monitored and maintained. HIS solutions are designed to keep track of your item dispenses and intimate you the expiring and low-on-stock items. These are the two major aspects when it comes to managing a clinic and those that require a lot of paperwork and efforts. HIS can give you real-time information on reports such as aging reports, summaries of supplies dispensed, reports on your services, trends, customer account statements and more.

Digitizing them and bringing all of them to one single portal makes operations interoperable. It also betters your engagement with patients by allowing you to send newsletters, information on any upcoming events, research or promotions, birthday emails and more.

Electronics Health Records (EHR)

EHR is a digital repository of patients’ health record. When you integrate a solution for your Ayurveda, Yoga & Naturopathy healthcare practices, you create an environment for improved practice performances and measurement of key metrics. The analytics modules allow you to find meaningful insights on patients’ record and give you real-time information on the progress of treatment, trends in key diagnostic parameters, overall disease trends across patients and also decision support tools.

Customer Portal

Having a patient portal is inevitable today. It not just ensures a better healthcare practice but also allows you to formulate better treatment agendas and plans. Since this is centralized, any clinician or a practitioner of Ayurveda, Yoga & Naturopathy can retrieve a patient’s health record and plan out medications and treatments. With the massive chunks of information on the patient in hand, the clinicians would also be able to make better and informed decisions and see trends through the solution’s analytics portal.

When information technology is rightly incorporated, you will experience better management of data and operations and find aspects for improvement in administration, patient engagement and healthcare practices. The technology is efficient, cost-effective and is inevitable today that will go on to become revolutionary tomorrow. With the renewed focus once again on Ayurveda, Yoga & Naturopathy as mainline healthcare practices, it is important that the proponents leverage technology to ride this wave and take their crafts far and wide.

AyushEHR is a standards compliant EHR with integrated customer portal. To get a personalized advantages list of how an EHR and customer portal can work wonders for your organization, speak or get in touch with us.

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A Beginner’s Guide to Electronic Health Record

 

One of the primary goals of tech revolutions is to offer convenience to people. Apart from making way for elevated and sophisticated lifestyles, ideal evolution of technology is where it works at the grass root levels and makes lives better for those who are in need of it. Driver-less cars, smart refrigerators and automated homes are essential but smart farming, autonomous power grids and digitized healthcare are necessities. Thanks to the advancements recently, healthcare has been significantly influenced by technology and one such offspring is an EHR or the Electronic Health Record.

What is an EHR?

In simple words, an Electronic Health Record is a digital version of your health record or your medical history. Instead of storing the data on paper and retrieving it during medical consultations, an electronic health record offers you the convenience of saving your data digitally over the cloud. Since it gets stored on a centralized portal, it becomes easy for clinics and doctors to retrieve your medical history and proceed with diagnosis or healthcare.

One of the most significant advantages of the electronic health record include the inclusion of data such as the following:

  • Radiology reports
  • Laboratory data
  • Immunizations
  • Past individual medical history
  • Vital Signs
  • Medications
  • Earlier Diagnosis
  • Progress notes
  • Demographics and more

Besides, the electronic health record also automates the flow of data and helps clinics streamline their workflows. Apart from healthcare, the health record fosters the evolution of a clinic’s operational procedures including data-driven decision making, outcomes reporting, quality management and more.

The Pros of Electronic Health Records

Apart from allowing doctors, physicians and clinics to deliver better diagnostic services to patients, electronic health records allows for improved healthcare by significantly reducing the occurrence of medical errors. With accurate and most recent data in hand, there is little scope for errors or misconceptions in diagnosis.

Besides, electronic health records also save significant time and strain of patients by eliminating the need to scan or undergo tests again and preventing any delays in treatments. With a streamlined electronic health record in hand, you can ensure you receive systematic services regardless of which clinic or specialist doctor you intend to get diagnosed from. With the record, the doctor will quickly take up the role of a ‘family doctor’ by knowing your medical history and recent ailments, allowing him or her to offer better diagnosis.

Electronic Health Records in Indigenous Medical Practices

Generally, electronic health records have been tested and applied in conventional medical practices. Little efforts have been taken in applying the benefits of electronic health records in the indigenous medical practices such as Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy. These medical practices require as much medical information about a patient as clinics do and for better and informed treatments, clinics practicing them require a centralized portal to retrieve the piece of information.

Naturopathy centers, Yogic healing centers and Ayurveda clinics can opt for electronic health records systems to deliver better services to individuals or patients who prefer the treatment practice and develop better treatment agendas for their wellbeing.

With an effective electronic health record in place, resorts, clinics, hospitals and medical colleges can work on delivering better healthcare treatments to patients and guests. To know how it can benefit your clinic or business, get in touch and we will help you out.

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What is OpenEHR?

OpenEHR Block diagramOpenEHR is a virtual community of technology and clinical domain professionals working on developing specifications for ensuring Universal Inter-operability of all electronic health data. It’s approach is multi-level, single source modelling within a service-oriented software architecture, in which dynamic models built by domain experts(Archetypes & Templates) and stable information model built by technologists exist at different levels within the application. Using OpenEHR specifications, it is now possible to build an EHR repository independently of content specifications enabling a new generation of EHR systems that routinely adapts to new requirements.

The international library of openEHR archetypes (CKM) currently contains about 500 archetypes and 6,500 data points which have been modelled by clinical professionals and health informatics experts without any technological knowledge of the final EHR systems.

Our EHR.Network cloud EHR platform is build on OpenEHR RM and so can incorporate any clinical model built using OpenEHR specification.

For more information, please visit OpenEHR website.

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Knowledge

What is SNOMED CT?

SNOMED CT is the acronym for Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine – Clinical Terms. It is a collection of more than 350,000 terms and phrases (referred to us concepts in SNOMED) that are popularly used in clinical practice across the world. Apart from allowing coding of unstructured textual data to make it computable, SNOMED also allows translation of the concepts to other languages, thus making the clinical data inter-operable across countries, regions and languages.

As per SNOMED International it:

  • Is the most comprehensive, multilingual clinical healthcare terminology in the world
  • Is a resource with comprehensive, scientifically validated clinical content
  • Enables consistent, processable representation of clinical content in electronic health records
  • Is mapped to other international standards
  • Is already used in more than fifty countries

When implemented in EHR applications, SNOMED CT can be used to represent clinically relevant information consistently, reliably and comprehensively as an integral part of producing electronic health information.

Using SNOMED CT

SNOMED CT is IP protected and needs a license for use. As India is a member of SNOMED International, it is free for use inside the country.

HealtheLife, being and affiliate licensee, is authorised to integrate and distribute SNOMED CT along with our software offerings. We are also authorised to extend it for use with Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy. So your AyushEHR subscription license includes the use of SNOMED CT also.

For more information please visit SNOMED International website.

 

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Knowledge

Person Activation Measure(PAM) – Metrics to improve your ability to maintain overall wellness

Standards compliant Electronic Health Records(EHR) platform

There is growing recognition, across the world, of the urgent need to shift healthcare system from being reactive to becoming proactive, from being focused on curative to driving wellness. Current provider-centric approach is designed with the curative approach and delivers poor customer experience, poor quality and high cost outcomes.

To drive adoption of modern wellness concepts, health services will need to be more effectively integrated around the individual rather than being organised around the provider and delivered in a siloed and fragmented way, unable to meet person’s expectations of quality and result. To trigger change in this way, a new set of metrics is needed to measure success, measures that needs to reach beyond the standard “sickness and repair” metrics and allow us to know how well a person is.

One such metric is the Person Activation Measure(PAM), that measures an individual’s knowledge, skill and confidence for managing his/her overall health and wellbeing. This paper mentions that “PAM has been shown to be a better predictor of health outcomes than known socio-demographic factors such as ethnicity and age. More activated people are more likely to attend screenings, check-ups, and immunizations, to adopt positive behaviours (e.g. diet, substance abuse, and exercise), and have clinical indicators in the normal range (e.g. blood sugar levels (A1c), blood pressure and cholesterol)”

Studies using the PAM have also noted that positive PAM scores are correlated with non-health outcomes. For example, workplace studies highlight a relationship between person activation, job satisfaction and absenteeism. Judith Hibbard notes in her paper “As such, patient activation may be tapping into a concept that goes beyond health”.

Insignia health has classified a person’s PAM levels as below

  1. Disengaged and overwhelmed – Individuals are passive and lack confidence. Knowledge is low, goal orientation is weak, and adherence is poor.
  2. Becoming aware, but still struggling – Individuals have some knowledge, but large gaps remain. They believe health is largely out of their control, but can set simple goals.
  3. Taking action – Individuals have the key facts and are building self-management skills. They strive for the best practice behaviors, and are goal-oriented.
  4. Maintaining behaviour and pushing action – Individuals have adopted new behaviors, but may struggle in times of stress or change. Maintaining a healthy lifestyle is a key focus.

It has been shown in the earlier quoted King’s Fund paper by Judith Hibbard that improvements in PAM allow people to become good managers of their own health. Studies of interventions to improve PAM show that persons with the lowest activation scores tend to increase their scores the most, suggesting that effective interventions can help engage even the most disengaged.

Useful links :

  • Patient activation and PAM FAQs
  • Patient Activation Measure – Wikipedia