Department of Medicine 2016 Tech Challenge

New Uses of Information Technology to Advance the Missions of the Department of Medicine

Electronic decision-making tool for the seriously ill

Idea Status: 

Patients with serious illness and their families face difficult decisions when diseases progress, or when complications and hospitalizations occur. Patients’ wishes closer to the end of their life are not often known, communicated through the health system continuum or honored. This proposal is aimed at creating an electronic decision making tool that will help patients and families with planning for treatments and procedures related to advanced illnesses. It will also help in identifying surrogate decision makers and will develop an interface with Apex. 

Comments

Giovanni - This is a great proposal and has some elements similar to Kara, Sirisha & my proposal. I agree that with our current technology patient's wishes are often not known and communicated through our existing technology. While our proposal aims to standardized documentation around advanced care planning through the EMR, I'm very interested in this idea of decision making tool for patients.

Can you tell me more?

And would you be willing to combine forces and potentially unify our proposals?

michelle mourad 

Great ideas, but rather than re-invent the wheel, you may want to look at our very own Rebecca Sudore's PREPARE website which is a patient-centered and driven decision making support tool. 

Thank you for the reference, Carla. I will look it up and see how it compares to my vision for the project.

Michelle, thank for your kind comments.

What I am referring to is a stepwise interactive tool that would provide patients with the evidence available made it easier to understand and tailored to the specific case, i.e. age, gender, primary and concurrent illnesses, etc. All to help patients and families in making decisions in advanced illnesses. For example decision for artificial nutrition and hydration like PEG placement or TPN, tracheostomy for long-term ventilation, etc.

Hope I satisfied your inquiry.   

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