A new class of patient-driven health care services is emerging to supplement and extend traditional health care delivery models and empower patient self-care. Patient-driven health care can be characterised as having an increased level of information flow, transparency, customisation, collaboration and patient choice and responsibility-taking, as well as quantitative, predictive and preventive aspects.
The premise is that we are at a new phase of health and medical care, where more decisions are being made by individuals on their own behalf, rather than by physicians, and that, furthermore, these decisions are being informed by new tools based on statistics, data, and predictions. We will act on the basis of risk factors and predictive scores, rather than on conventional wisdom and doctors recommendations. We will act in collaboration with others, drawing on collective experience with health and disease. These tools will create a new opportunity and a new responsibility for people to
— Thomas Goetz, Decision Tree
act - to make health decisions well before they become patients.
The potential exists to both improve traditional health care systems and expand the concept of health care though new services. Read about three categories of novel health services: health social networks, consumer personalised medicine and quantified self- tracking here.
