Authors:
Eleni Kaldoudi
and
Nikos Makris
Affiliation:
Democritus University of Thrace, Greece
Keyword(s):
Patient Empowerment, Cognitive Process, Empowerment Model, Awareness, Engagement, Control.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Biomedical Engineering
;
Cloud Computing
;
e-Health
;
Evaluation and Use of Healthcare IT
;
Health Information Systems
;
Platforms and Applications
Abstract:
The concept of patient empowerment has emerged as a new paradigm that can help improve medical
outcomes while lowering costs of treatment by facilitating self-directed behavior change. Patient
empowerment has gained even more popularity since the 1990’s, due to the emergent of eHealth and its
focus on putting the patient in the centre of the interest. Current literature provides systematic reviews of the
area, and shows that well defined areas (or dimensions) have eventually emerged in the field. In this paper
we argue that patient empowerment should be treated formally as a cognitive process. We thus propose a
cognitive model that consists of three major levels of increasing complexity and importance: awareness,
engagement and control. We also describe the different constituents of each level and their implications for
patient empowerment interventions, focusing on interventions based on information and communication
technologies. Finally, we discuss the implications of this model f
or the design and evaluation of patient
empowerment interventions.
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