Reference:

Timo Honkela. Models for self-organization of health care. In Abstracts of FISCAR'07, The Third Finnish Conference on Cultural and Activity Research. University of Helsinki, 2007.

Abstract:

Kekki (2004) points out that socioeconomic trends such as globalization, industrialization and urbanization are transforming how populations live. Increased personal freedom, greater emphasis on and awareness of the rights of the individual, increased mobility, and declining importance of the family unit all have an impact on community-based social networks and have indirect effects on the provision of health care. As a related phenomenon, physicians may be less willing to commit themselves to primary health care positions, especially in the public sector (Kekki 2004). Educated consumers of health care services are also becoming more and more aware of the availability of potentially relevant information in the web. Web search engines are used widely by the patients who more and more often question the quality of diagnostic practices based on this information. Bedgood et al. (2007) believe that the web can also provide physician-researchers with useful information about common and uncommon diseases. Moreover, they state that the web allows patients to voice concerns that they may not freely express to their doctor. The web provides a means for collecting data from a larger number of patients than may be available at any single institution (Bedgood et al. 2007). Companies like Google indicate that the web can be used to find both health care information and providers efficiently (Bosworth 2007). In this presentation, an outline of a new model for arranging health care is proposed based on active use of the internet and principles of self-organization, including efficient feedback mechanisms. Three specific issues are discussed: 1) How to ensure a good fit between the needs and problems of citizens and patients in one hand and the expertise and skills of health care providers on the other? 2) How to alleviate the problems caused by the current overt use of classification and labeling schemes in diagnostic practices? 3) How to help patients and doctors to communicate efficiently regardless of the terminological barrier?

Suggested BibTeX entry:

@inproceedings{HonkelaFISCAR2007,
    author = {Timo Honkela},
    booktitle = {Abstracts of FISCAR'07, The Third Finnish Conference on Cultural and Activity Research},
    publisher = {University of Helsinki},
    title = {Models for Self-Organization of Health Care},
    year = {2007},
}