By having greater involvement in their own health care, patients feel more connected, they feel more accountable. opportunity still existing in that area.” There are some contributing factors to this relatively slower pace of progress for integration, Hunter says. Concerns about patient privacy have generally inhibited most organizations and health-care providers to take the leap toward full interconnectivity. In an ideal, interconnected health-care world, a patient would have full control over which provider would have access to what patient data. That may be coming soon, but such capabilities do not exist at the moment. “Providing the patient or consumers themselves with their own access to care, that still remains a challenge for us. All of that information remains largely in the hands of singular providers without www.canadianchiropractor.ca having enough connectivity to those in the full circle of care,” Hunter explains. She added, however, that there is great interest in this kind of patient-driven access to care. Expect this trend of technologies that put health care in the hands of the patients to gradually grow and take mainstream adoption. “Patients are demanding and we deserve it,” Hunter points out. “By having greater involvement in their own health care, they feel more connected, they feel more accountable and responsible. “There is a better dialogue that tends to happen between care providers and patients and as a result of that, quality tends to trend upwards.” The growth of wearable technologies in recent years, which allow consumers to take charge of their own health and wellbeing, is an indication that consumers are welcoming these types of technologies. While its current application is largely for self-care, wearable techs provide a snapshot of a patient’s overall health and can potentially be a useful tool for health-care providers in their health assessments and care recommendations. There are also signs in the market place that people are increasingly taking the reins in their own health care. Increasingly, patients are taking to the worldwide web and acting as “consumers” when searching for health-care services. The internet has become their information portal and gateway to access services and professionals. Health-care providers, including chiropractors, are expected to ramp up their online presence and offer potential patients the conveniences of a digital interaction. The chiropractor’s website is typically the first place a potential patient would look to find a provider that’s right for them, says Dr. Stephane Laverdiere, president and co-owner of Atlas Chiropractic Systems, and a chiropractor in Tillsonburg, Ont. “A trend with the internet is that people want to be more immersed in it, they want to streamline things, and patients are so used to filling out things online for everything and they expect chiropractors to rise to that standard as well,” Laverdiere says. Data driven As health-care practices and organizations increasingly become digital, the collective accumulation of all health care data provides opportunities for practitioners to gain more insights into their patient population’s health. However, that opportunity seems to generally remain as such for the majority of health practices, says PwC’s Hunter, who has been involved in a few studies on data analytics in health care. “Interestingly, a lot of physicians are using their EMRs (electronic medical records) only for ‘exotic care’ – rather than using it to manage the health of December 2017 Canadian Chiropractor 21
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