Articulating a Framework for Patient Empowerment to Support Greater E-Health Integration

The empowerment of citizens in relation to personal healthcare management includes consideration of a multi-faceted collection of elements. Simplistic forms of understanding, which link empowerment to access provide limited acknowledgement for the requirement to facilitate a greater sense of health ownership in patients and collaborative working practices in practitioners. More complex attitudes to the delivery of empowered patients encompassing knowledge development, technological awareness and partnership approaches to healthcare delivery are steps in the right direction but strain to fit currently emerging ideas around patient centered care. Models and frameworks open avenues for better understanding of the efficacy of patient empowerment in the healthcare system. However, the dominant motif within the constructs of some patient empowerment models, which tends to focus mainly around a specified area within health system have reduced the strength and potentials of a patient empowerment framework. This paper posits that existing frameworks aiming at empowering patients for a patient centered healthcare system are insufficiently presented. The frameworks, which are mostly focused on one aspect, fail to factor in the invaluableness of holism and technological innovation. Through a review of existing frameworks and an articulation of patient demands, weaknesses in current structures to support empowerment are explored, and key constituents of a framework for patient empowerment are determined. For a patient empowerment framework of the 21st century, aspects of systems theory such as holism and iteration are vital. Consequently, the paper articulates a model, which would consider these systems theory ideas to present a robust framework of patient empowerment. A robust framework is key to ensuring an empowered patient in the 21st century e-health system.