E-Health Insider has an article about our new partnership with howRU. howRU was founded a couple of years by pioneers in health care informatics, including Tim Benson. The aim was to collect information about patient outcomes but in a way that was easy for patients to fill out, and scientifically useful for those trying to find out. Over time the team has demonstrated how their simple form provides as much predictive value as much larger, traditional assessment tools.

Personally, it is a real honour for me to finally work with Tim. I still remember reading two papers that he wrote for in the BMJ back in 2002. They explained why UK GPs had led the world in the use of electronic medical records, and why hospital doctors were so slow. (The answer, by the way, is incentives and scalability.) The articles came out shortly after I had finished my first year as a doctor, working in a hospital and in a GP surgery, after years of writing medical software. It beautifully answered a question that had puzzled and troubled me. Tim is regularly able to do this as a gifted teacher, and as one of the most experienced health informaticians in the UK.

In working with howRU, we hope to quickly and easily show clinicians how well their patients are doing. This is something they are desperate to know in a timely and accurate manner, but which they cannot do in rushed clinic appointments. For those who pay for care, including governments and insurance companies, this is a great way of finding out which of their patients are getting the best care. And for patients, this is an easy way to monitor their own health and share this information with their loved ones.

Patients Know Best links up with howRU

Patients Know Best has announced a partnership with Abies Ltd so users of its online medical records system can use the howRU patient reported outcome measurement tool.

HowRU is an online tool invented by medical computing pioneer Tim Benson that measures and analyses how a patient feels on a day to day basis.

Using a simple graphic interface, patients can log how they feel physically and mentally and how much they can do in terms of loss of function and dependence each day.

Patients Know Best says that incorporating howRU will give clinical teams more information about their patients’ health and wellbeing – which in turn will improve the level of care that users will receive.

The tool will also enable closer monitoring of patient care at particular institutions and more effective research into the health and happiness of patients with particular conditions.

Patients Know Best founder and chief executive Mohammad Al-Ubaydli said: “When you’re asked ‘how are you?’ it’s human nature to say ‘fine’ – even when you’re not.

“The real power of howRU is that it gives clinicians a real-world view of how their patients are feeling on a day to day basis – and then tracks this over time.”

Tim Benson, founder of Abies Ltd and howRU said: “It’s tough to remember what you had for dinner a week ago let alone how you were feeling.

“HowRU provides a rapid and easy way for patients to capture this information – which in turn provides clinicians with more detailed view of how people are living with long term conditions.

“My vision is for howRU to be ubiquitous and to be adopted as the standard way that patients track and report back their healthcare experiences. Our integration with Patients Know Best marks an important step towards achieving that objective.”