Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Harnessing Information Technology To Inform Patients Facing Routine Decisions: Cancer Screening As A Test Case, Alex Krist, Steven H. Woolf, Camille Hochheimer, Roy T. Sabo, Paulette Kashiri, Resa M. Jones, Jennifer Elston Lafata, Rebecca S. Etz, Shin-Ping Tu

Family Medicine and Population Health Publications

PURPOSE Technology could transform routine decision making by anticipating patients’ information needs, assessing where patients are with decisions and preferences, personalizing educational experiences, facilitating patient-clinician information exchange, and supporting follow-up. This study evaluated whether patients and clinicians will use such a decision module and its impact on care, using 3 cancer screening decisions as test cases.

METHODS Twelve practices with 55,453 patients using a patient portal participated in this prospective observational cohort study. Participation was open to patients who might face a cancer screening decision: women aged 40 to 49 who had not had a mammogram in 2 years, men …