Dr Patricia Flatley Brennan on Emerging Research Areas in Healthcare

Emerging technology in the patient-clinician relationship and more rapidly developed data-driven knowledge will accelerate care, according to Patricia Flatley Brennan, RN, PhD, director of the National Library of Medicine.

Transcript

What areas of health research and innovation would you like to see journal like The American Journal of Managed Care^® explore going forward as policy, technology, and models of care continue to evolve?

I think of care as a 3-legged stool, and there's technological components of it, there's human components of it, and there's knowledge components of it. In the human component we tend to focus on the health professional. And I'd like to see that expanded to partnerships with the individual. Which then changes the knowledge component of it significantly because we have to add knowledge, not just what a health professional needs and understands, but also what an individual patient may need or understand. And that requires us understanding that the knowledge needed for care is broader than what a professional would define as relevant to care. It also includes what the patient would define for care.

Now, the technological part is the third part. And I have to say, I'm really excited to finally see, after 25, 30 years of doing research on technology and patient care, that we're starting to see more effective use of technology with direct patient care. Video visits for example, or a mixing of prepare for care self-assesment that's done by the patient online before they come into the visit so when the patient gets into the clinic not only does the clinician know what is of concern to that individual but to also review what might need to be done in an effective way.

I think the technological patient-clinician partnership and an emerging, more rapidly developed data-driven knowledge is going to really accelerate care in ways we haven't see before.