The consultation of the future

Abstract

In the future, healthcare becomes more challenging to reach and less personal. The workload for specialists is increasing (Rossen, 2018), the current health path for patients is extended and long (van Tongerloo, 2019) and more general practitioners do not want to have their own practice which results in lower accessibility (Smit, 2019). Besides, the computer is often in-between the communication of the patient and the specialist when entering the consultation room (Voormolen, 2013). These developments are opposite to the ones of the on-demand society we are currently living in: people have personalised information on-demand and expect companies to understand their needs and wants on the spot (Solis, 2017). However, healthcare is, at this point, behind.

The Erasmus MC has noticed this gap, and therefore, the Erasmus MC wants to implement the value-based healthcare strategy. Within this strategy, the Erasmus MC wants to focus more on the patient experience and the patient’s participation in decision making during the consultation (Kimpen, 2019). So how to improve this patient experience, to align the consultation with the value-based healthcare system?

Within this project, the current barriers of positive patient experience, before, during and after the consultation, are defined by an extensive literature and user study.
The concept proposal, the renewed patient portal of the Erasmus MC, aims to translate these barriers into enablers of a positive patient experience. The renewed patient portal exists out of three elements: improve the patient’s knowledge around a disease by giving personalised information (1), track the patient’s data to get more personalised care (2), and prepare the consultation to start the conversation to the point (3).
A case study for diabetes type 1 patients, focussed on the second element of the renewed patient portal, shows a tangible example of how the patient’s data can be used to give more personalised and on-demand care. The final deliverable of the case study is Mijn Erasmus I.D., a visual representation of the patient’s mental and physical data. Mijn Erasmus I.D. is a digital patient I.D. that is accessible via a platform for the patient and an interactive screen in the consultation room.
An extensive validation study has proven that Mijn Erasmus I.D. turns all the found barriers into enablers of the positive patient experience.

The aimed longterm effect is to create a more in-depth and personal conversation, within the same amount of time. Mijn Erasmus I.D. allows the specialists to understand the perspective of the patient better within the given amount of time by gathering the patient’s information up-front. An understanding of the patient’s perspective contributes to better health outcomes at a physical, psychological and social level (Street, Makoul, Arora, & Epstein, 2009). The research, the design goal, the concept proposal (the renewed patient portal) and the case study (Mijn Erasmus I.D.) are evenly important to inspire healthcare for future innovation.