Rupa Dainer, MD, PSV’s Chief Strategy Officer and Medical Director for the Ambulatory Surgery Center, was a panelist at the Cleveland Summit: Healthcare Transformation in the Digital Era at the Global Center for Health Innovation (Cleveland, OH) on September 29.
The summit raised awareness about the critical need to upgrade America’s digital infrastructure with the promise and peril of patients becoming more “connected” than ever. The current 3 billion internet users and 2.6 billion smart phone subscriptions could quadruple by 2020. A third of consumers have at least one health, medical or fitness app on their mobile devices. This transformation raises many IT healthcare issues around patient information, e-visits, wearable electronics and other policy and practice implications.
On the panel, “The Connected Patient: Implications of Care in the Palm of Your Hand”, Dr. Dainer represented the perspective of the clinician/patient team. Together with representatives from The Cleveland Clinic, Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society, and HealthCelerate, Dr. Dainer explored the ways that patients can be better connected and informed about their own health. She says, “Technology can help re-engineer the healthcare system toward a focus on wellness, preventive care, genomic risk factors, managing rising risk and optimizing chronic disease rather than just sick care. However, transformation of healthcare IT is a complex and sometimes daunting journey for both the physician and the patient that will require considerable attention and patience over the next decade.“