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PATIENT EMPOWERMENT NETWORK
The basic things that you can do there, apart from doing a virtual visit, is to do billing information, usually there's a way to get a list of your medications, ask for prescription refills, schedule appointments, get letters for things like school physicals, and that the like. Nowadays, those things can be handled electronically. There's a little bit of, I would say, activation energy for some people, because signing up can be complicated. It is so secure you are sometimes required to submit a letter or do something extra than you would to sign up for a normal website, all in good intent. I would urge people to put up with whatever barrier hits you in the beginning. Once you get involved with a patient portal, and we're working very hard now to make it a really a good experience for you, patients will be able to not only interact with us as providers, but you will be able to access all kinds of information and services offered by your healthcare system, access lots of information from your record and so forth. As a cancer patient, and for others living with chronic conditions, how might telemedicine impact the future of survivorship? It's a great question. One aspect of survivorship is things like living wills which, if it isn't done electronically, we will have to move in that direction, to enable that. There is a lot of interest in interactivity with palliative care and hospice around how to better care for patients, particularly around medication management. Patients can be afraid of opiates and sometimes they're in terrible pain, so we need to get this right. So those are a couple of examples.
Honora Miller:
Dr. Kvedar:
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