IBM previewed the IBM Patient Empowerment System at CeBIT in Hanover, Germany and the system demonstrated its standards-based platform which enables patients to integrate and manage their healthcare data for all their medical needs, receive personalized recommendations or alerts for safer medical treatment, and immediately access data from a vast range of sources including: third-party health portals, hospital electronic medical record systems, sensors, home devices for monitoring health conditions, scientific references from PubMed, and more.

The Gacheon University Gil hospital in Korea was one of the first pilot projects of the IBM Patient Empowerment System, could you please share some results?

The project with Gil Hospital is still in the early stages but we are confident that this pilot project will demonstrate increased efficiency and the reduction of costs. The healthcare professionals from Gil hospital are reporting that by giving patients access to information that is relevant to them and easy to understand, they are also improving patient safety during medical treatments.

More so, studies suggest that customer involvement improves satisfaction. Thus, we strongly believe the system will increase patient contentment and will improve user experience.

How do you see the future of the IBM Patient Empowerment System?

Standard based connectivity, adverse drug effects and social medical are the services provided by our system and all of them can be embedded in many systems whether a patient portal, a decision support system, wellness management services and many other services. The increasing adoption of electronic medical records will drive the ongoing need for solutions such as this.

How flexible and customizable is the IBM Patient Empowerment System?

The patient empowerment system is a collection of services bounded within a web portal. The system allows customization in its look and feel and support different presentation to different user groups. For example, patients and doctors can use a single system with different services and views. Additionally, patients may empower others to assist them in managing their records. People who are less comfortable with computers may allow family members to manage their data. We envision, that in the future there will be healthcare and lifestyle consultancy businesses that will work with the patients and thus will be given rights in the patient empowerment system.

The system is SOA based and is built around open healthcare and IT standards. As times goes by, new services and workflows will be developed and integrated, expanding its capabilities as both technologies as well as the ecosystem evolves.

For hospitals interested in implementing the IBM Patient Empowerment System, how do they work with IBM?

IBM works with hospitals worldwide and the IBM Patient Empowerment System is the result of the collaboration among three IBM centers around the world: the IBM Ubiquitous Computing Laboratory in Korea; IBM Research - Haifa, Israel and IBM Research - China.

IBM is also focused on the area of health analytics, which uses sophisticated software to analyze vast amounts of medical data from many different sources at once to quickly help doctors make more informed decisions

We are happy to discuss the project with healthcare organizations interested in learning more. For further information, please simple visit IBM Research, www.research.ibm.com

Could you please underline the contribution of IBM Haifa to the IBM Patient Empowerment System?

We have been focused on three major services that are part of the overall solution, including the integration of clinical data from various sources (such as hospital system and automatic data collection from sensors and devices like scales and blood pressure). One more service that we contributed is the incorporation of pharmacogenetics knowledge for analysis of genetic test results and early notification about potential adverse drug events. Last but not least is the novel service that leverages social and medical networks as a platform for additional interesting and important services.

What "lessons learned" would share to eHealthNews.eu / eHealthServer.com readers from this Research project?

People are almost never indifferent when they see the patient empowerment system. There is always a heated debate - not about the technology, rather about the place of the patient in the healthcare ecosystem, the confidence level we have in patient generated information, the significant influence of the social network in healthcare, etc.

For me, this is what research is about; show people a vision and make it happen. It's those reactions and discussions that help shape our society.

I would also like to emphasize what should be the obvious; collaboration makes things happen. The IBM patient empowerment system is a collaborative effort of research and development in Israel, Korea and China. It brings the skills and capabilities of the labs to create a meaningful worldwide impact.

Thank you!

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