Digital Decision Aid Helps Providers Communicate With Patients

By Katie Wike, contributing writer

An electronic aid might be just what the doctor ordered to encourage meaningful conversations with patients.

A digital tool housed on your tablet could be the next great way to educate patients and foster meaningful conversations with them about their health. Fierce Health IT reports researchers have developed a digital tool that aids physicians in keeping updated materials readily accessible for discussion with patients. Previously, providers would print packets of information to send home with patients, but it was rarely reviewed after patients left the office and was difficult to constantly update.

Now, a decision aid called SHARE-IT can replace much of that work right on the screen of a tablet. A study of the technology, published in the British Medical Journal, explains, “Many clinicians think they practice shared decision making, but evidence suggest a perception-reality gap because of misconceptions about the nature of shared decision making, the skills it requires, the time it takes, and the degree to which patients, families, and (caregivers) wish to share in decision making.”

The SHARE-IT can not only present all of the needed information on a mobile device, but it can also translate it into different languages or adapt it to national context.

“It’s designed so that the doctor is inviting the patient to discuss what’s important to them,” said Agoritsas, a research fellow of the Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics of the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine in an announcement. “So, you both sit down in front of the tablet and you dive in and talk about what’s most important to the patient first.”

“There is often too much information presented,” said Agoritsas. “The process should be more about the discussion you have with your doctor and about enhancing the conversation, not overwhelming patients with too much information. It’s less about showing the evidence than showing it in a way that it becomes a discussion.”