Leveraging the power of new technologies, researchers funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Project HealthDesign, to which Manatt attorneys and advisors serve as regulatory and policy counsel in partnership with the Center for Democracy and Technology, are encouraging patients to track and share with clinicians observations of daily living (ODLs) and other information that can serve as important indicators of a patient's health. Previous phases of Project HealthDesign focused on making personal health records more effective tools for patient self-care. The current phase tests the impact of patients' use of smartphones and mobile devices to collect and share self-care information like ODLs with their health care providers. While ripe with potential to improve patients' health, the use of mobile devices to generate and communicate health information subjects this potentially sensitive information to security risks. These risks, if unaddressed, pose a potential obstacle to more widespread use of such tools by patients to generate and share health information with their clinicians.
Article originally published in JHIM, vol. 26, no. 3 by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society. Used with permission.
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