'@Bing' your health & fitness

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Your health is coming to your browser.

With Windows 8.1 (coming "late 2013"), Microsoft is introducing two new Bing "apps" — one for food and drink and the other for health and fitness.

The Bing Health & Fitness app, for desktops and tablets, will allow you to track exercise, diet and medical information. It will have 3D body maps and an interactive way to check your symptoms (Bing advises "The guide is not intended to be medical advice but simply a reference guide"). There will also be tutorials and videos to help you learn a new workout and links to articles about health (there's the search part!).

It was not clear how these apps will integrate with phones, which will be critical for long-term adoption by consumers. 

But it's encouraging to see major players continuing to try to innovate in this space.


 

Life, Interrupted. Patient, Engaged.

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This is a compelling series — one that shows the power of social.

Suleika Jaouad, a 23-year-old writer from Saratoga Springs, N.Y., is sharing her experiences as a young adult with cancer on the New York Times website in words and video.

A great lesson for health care organizations is the strength that Jaouad gained from sharing her experiences and journey.

"I never felt brave enough to put myself out there. So I started a blog. All the thoughts I have been having for the past year and all of these experiences came flooding out. Up until that point I had kept my story very private. And suddenly I had this new support system that had formed out of nowhere."

Support communities once met in stark conference rooms and church basements. Now they meet in the cloud — on Twitter, Facebook, blogs, forums and private and public online "communities."

It takes strength — and vulnerability — to share. Patients go from being or feeling alone to picking up some buddies along their journey. 

When encouraged to share — and given the tools do so — the end results are engaged patients (and families) who take deliberate steps in their own care. 

 

4 steps to better patient engagement

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Communication, communication, communication. And communication.

That's the core of the four steps hospitals and health systems can take to improve patient engagement, according to a new report from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).

"Many of the errors we see in health care stem from communication problems,” said AHRQ Director Carolyn M. Clancy, MD. “That’s why we developed this resource, to give hospitals practical, evidence-based information to improve communication on the front lines of health care — and ultimately keep patients safer.”

Here are the four steps the AHRQ report recommends:

  • Be advisors. How hospitals can recruit and train patients and family members to serve as advisors and train clinicians and hospital staff to work effectively with them.
  • Promote better communication at the bedside to improve quality. How patients and families can interact with the health care team, understand the different roles that team members play and see the importance of being partners with clinicians.
  • Participate in bedside shift reports. Teaching patients and families what a bedside shift report is, how they can contribute to it and how nurses can support those contributions.
  • Prepare to leave the hospital. Different approaches clinicians can use to plan and keep track of the tasks that need to be done before a patient is discharged from the hospital.

All of these focus on clear and transparent communication and inclusion of patients and family members in their care plans, including setting appropriate and achievable expectations.

Download the whole report here.

This post originally appeared on EngagingPatients.org, a blog dedicated to advancing patient and family-centered care. I am a member of the Engaging Patients Advisory Board and write for the blog.