The purpose of this study--to help patients and their physicians, working together, to improve the quality of medical care--is four fold: first, to deliver to patients, in their homes over the Internet, interactive interviews that obtain their medical histories and offer health-related information and suggestions; second, to use these interviews to facilitate communication between patient and physician; third, to incorporate the results of these interviews into a Web-based electronic medical record, developed jointly by patient and physician and readily accessible both to the physician, in the clinic, and to the patient, in the home, over a protected Web-site; and fourth, to conduct a randomized, controlled clinical trial to ascertain the effect of the interviews on the number of office visits by patients, the time per visit, the number of telephone calls and e-mail messages between patients and physicians, the completeness of patients' problem lists, the adherence by patients to medication regimens, and the assessments by patients and physicians of their office visits, as well as to ascertain the satisfaction of patients and physicians with the computer interviews. The long-range goal of this project is to provide, for use both locally and in places of export, economically feasible, interactive, computer-based, health-related interviews that have been demonstrated by experimental trials to be of benefit both to patients and their physicians. (By Cybermedicine, we mean use of computing to enhance communication in health care.)
| Slack, Warner V; Kowaloff, Hollis B; Davis, Roger B et al. (2012) Evaluation of computer-based medical histories taken by patients at home. J Am Med Inform Assoc 19:545-8 |
| Slack, Warner V; Kowaloff, Hollis B; Davis, Roger B et al. (2011) Test-retest reliability in a computer-based medical history. J Am Med Inform Assoc 18:73-6 |
| Bleich, Howard L; Slack, Warner V (2010) Reflections on electronic medical records: when doctors will use them and when they will not. Int J Med Inform 79:1-4 |
