Empowering patients through eHealth: Lombardy Region case study

This study aims at illustrating the articulated methodology that the Lombardy Region has designed to (i) gather evidence about if and how the ICT-enabled service positively/negatively empower patients, and to (ii) allow data pooling between their data and the ones of the other 8 pilots, critical for the development of eHealth/patient empowerment policies in Europe. Method To explain the capability of the new ICT-enabled service to empower patients it has been decomposed in 3 synergic functionalities: informing, educating and communicating. Patients have been required to evaluate their ease of use and the perceived value. Their evaluations are compared with their level of empowerment before and after the use of the service. Finally, professionals’ satisfaction with the service has been collected to build the broad picture. Results Preliminary data from 173 enrolled patients in 2 hospitals and from 7 healthcare professionals have been collected. Both patients and professionals accepted well the new service. However, its diffusion seems to be influenced by a limited IT-literacy among the target patients. The same methodology is under implementation in the other 8 pilots confirming its generalizability. Conclusion This study offers new insights about (i) the explanation of why and how eHealth solutions might empower patients, and (ii) the design of multi-centric, pan-European studies for developing evidence-based policies about patient empowerment/eHealth. Possible applications or implications Additionally, healthcare professionals are interested to use this new service for managing comorbidities in chronic patients since the systematic storage of information on all pathologies and therapies in a unique repository helps overcoming partial views on patient history and therapy.