Driving Quality in Informatics: Fulfilling the Promise

Book excerpt: Although the data in healthcare comes from and relates to patients, it has generally been the clinician and not the patient who has been seen as the end-user of health information or health information technology. This seems set to change though, as the evolution of new online tools and mobile applications has led to the growth of a grass-roots effort from patients to change their role and involvement in their own health management. This book presents papers from the Information Technology and Communications in Health conference, ITCH 2015, held in Victoria, Canada, in February 2015. The theme of this conference is patient-centered care, and not only were contributors asked to consider the role and voice of the patient, but patients themselves were invited to contribute papers describing their experiences in healthcare and their use of their own data. The papers included here reflect not only informatics innovations in the field, but also explore how to involve patients in the design process, implementation and long-term use of health information systems, and will be of interest to researchers, health practitioners and patients alike.