Empowered Customers in E-Health Business Process

TL;DR

This paper explores customer empowerment in e-health, proposing a reference model of the Personal Health Cycle to distinguish electronic health records from medical records and enhance patient control.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive PHC model to better understand and implement customer empowerment in healthcare processes.

Findings

PHC provides a holistic view of healthcare business processes.

The model clarifies distinctions between EHR and EMR.

Empowerment enhances patient engagement and control.

Abstract

E-health innovations support empowered customers. It offers the ability for customers to have greater control and ready access applications of health information, clinical information, and social interaction between interested groups. However, providing empowerment in any state of interaction levels to customers (patients) in a healthcare organization is challenging tasks. Customers are empowered in the sense of controlling the process of interaction between a firm with its customers, and among customers themselves. This paper discusses dimension of customers' empowerment in e-health business process. We propose reference model of Personal Health Cycle (PHC) as a holistic view of healthcare business process. The PHC is used to define and distinct electronic health record (EHR) from electronic medical record (EMR) and customers empowerment.