I would like to introduce the concept of the family Chief Medical Officer as a major user of personal health records, and thus of Patients Know Best software. The profile should be the medical analogue of Shutterfly’s typical customer, described by CEO Jeff Housenbold as the Chief Memory Officer.
It is usually a woman. In Jeff’s case it is a wealthy, white, housewife. I my case it will initially be wealthy, white and well woman, as found in the case mix of some early patient portal sites. More significantly, rightly or wrongly, women bear more of the burden of care in the families than their men do. This is typical in the Sandwich Generation, as a middle aged woman has to track the vaccination records of her children, and the treatments of her elderly parents.
Patients Know Best software must save the family CMO time with easy access to vaccination records each school year, and reduce anxiety with easy access to what happened to the parents during their last visit with a physician. The last aspect is most tragic and acute with parents suffering from dementia as neither they nor their carers know what happened in the most recent clinical visit because the patient simply forgets.
One comment