Exploiting Cloud-Based Personal Health Information Systems in Practicing Patient Centered Care Model - Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies - page 315

improve patient care. It also promotes the introduction of new healthcare delivery
models that will make healthcare more efficient and effective.
The introduction of new emerging healthcare models, such as patient-centered
care, pharmaceutical care, and chronic care model, are changing how people think
about health and of patients themselves.
Patient-centered care [1, 2, 3] emphasizes the coordination and integration of
care, and the use of appropriate information, communication, and education technolo-
gies in connecting patients, caregivers, physicians, nurses, and others into a healthcare
team where health system supports and encourages cooperation among team mem-
bers. It is based on the assumption that physicians, patients and their families have the
ability to obtain and understand health information and services, and make appropri-
ate health decisions [4]. This in turn requires that health information should be pre-
sented according to individuals understanding and abilities [5].
Pharmaceutical care emphasizes the movement of pharmacy practice away from
its original role on drug supply towards a more inclusive focus on patient care [6, 7,
8]. It emphasizes the responsible provision of drug therapy for the purpose of achiev-
ing definite outcomes that improve patient's quality of life [9, 10].
Chronic care model [11, 12] emphasizes patients' long-term healthcare needs as a
counterweight to the attention typically paid to acute short-term, and emergency care.
In this sense, the traditional care models are not appropriate as the patients with
chronic illness do not receive enough information about their condition, and they are
not supported in caring themselves after they leave the doctor's office or hospital.
Patient remote monitoring and home telehealth technologies provide a variety of
tools for patients to take an active role in the management of their chronic diseases.
Especially, the ability to monitor and interact with patient from a distance by exploit-
ing electronic devices to record and send the measurements of patients' vital signs to
a caregiver has been a key technology in fostering patients' ability to receive care at
home. Earlier the only reliable means of controlling such measurements has been for
a medical professional to take them directly, or for a patient to be constantly moni-
tored in hospital, which would normally only happen once the patient has become
seriously ill.
The new technologies and principle of practicing medicine holds significant prom-
ise of improving on major health care delivery problems. However, there are many
functions in the patient-centered care, pharmaceutical care and chronic care models
that the home telehealth devices and the e-heath tools such as personal health records
do not support.
For example, patients that are out of hospital or who are left hospital often have
concerns about their medicines, and so there is strong demand for extending the func-
tionalities of home telehealth devices by the functions of pharmaceutical care. Neither
the current e-heath tools support the coordination of the care, nor the social connec-
tions among the members of patient's healthcare team. They also fail in providing
comprehensive access to patient's health data and in promoting patient's medical
education.
Inspired by the (semantic) web technologies and the flexibility of cloud compu-
ting, we have studied their suitability for supporting the emerging healthcare models.
Our studies have indicated that Personal Health Information Systems (PHIS) should
support the functionalities of many traditional e-health tools such as remote patient