Enhancing Patient Physician Communication with Electronic Symptom Reporting (ESR): A Multilevel Model

Abstract

This article describes the development of a multilevel theoretical model, w hich explains electronic symptom reporting (ESR) in the context of chronic disease management. ESR entails the use of patient-held technologies, such as electronic personal health records (ePHRs), for recording patient symptom data so that the information can be transmitted to a physician for interpretation. As patient recall of symptoms is critical to treatment effectiveness, ESR offers several advantages over traditional symptom reporting methods. The patient has the ability to conveniently collect symptom data, w hich can subsequently be view ed by the physician in an interpretable and relevant manner. This article proposes a theoretical model, w hich integrates the perspectives of both patient and physician, in order to inform theory development in this area.

Editors’ Introduction to the Special Section on Patient-centered e-Health: Research Opportunities and Challenges

“…Three articles in this special issue examine aspects of this problem. Dohan and Tan [2014] discuss electronic symptom reporting (ESR) systems, which are designed so that patients can collect symptom information and send it to their physician. Their article uses the examples of diabetes and inflammatory bowel diseases, both of which are chronic diseases that require patient self-monitoring, but could also benefit from physician feedback at various points.…”

“…Most of these also tested the model, at least to some extent. The dependent variables for some of the models were adoption and use [Wilson et al, 2014;Archer and Cocosilia, 2014], while others had health-related outcomes, e.g., active coping with one's disease [Dohan and Tan, 2014], and taking actions to effect life-changing interventions [Ghosh, Khuntia, Chawla and Deng, 2014]. For the studies of online health communities, dependent variables included support or help provided to others [Kordzadeh et al, 2014], senior's quality of life [Choi et al, 2014], engaging in trust behaviors [Fan et al, 2014], and number of message threads initiated [Huang et al, 2014].…”

“…Patients often do not use systems or fail to continue to use them even when such systems are useful for helping them control their diseases. For example, Dohan and Tan [2014] argue that the IS Continuance model is more appropriate than TAM for studying tools to support chronic diseases. Thus, we need research that will investigate what the drivers are for PCEH-system use across a variety of disease types.…”

“…The model was tested using a PLS analysis of data from 389 patients with chronic diseases. Dohan and Tan [2014], "Enhancing Patient Physician Communication with Electronic Symptom Reporting (ESR): A Multilevel Model," develop, but do not empirically test, a multilevel model to explain adoption of ESR tools. In the model, the quality of information patients provide about their chronic disease affects the satisfaction of physicians with that information, which in turn affects patients' use of ESR tools.…”

Digitalization as institutional work: a case of designing a tool for changing diabetes care

“…One main concern is how to evaluate the effects of technology use on health care. For instance studies investigate how e-health tools for patient have beneficial impact on their health in the form of, for example, clinical outcomes, compliance with treatment or coping ability (McMahon et al, 2005;Dohan and Tan, 2014;Ghosh et al, 2014). Patients' views and experiences from gaining access to electronic medical records have also been investigated, showing for instance that patients had predominantly positive experiences with record transparency and open sharing of notes and test results (Woods et al, 2013).…”