Bridging Care Communication and Health Management Within Diverse and Underserved Populations

As the US healthcare system becomes further impacted by factors such as the oncoming flood of aging baby boomers, increases in the amount of people uninsured or underinsured, higher occurrences of chronic illnesses (diabetes, hypertension, etc.), and a potentially insufficient pool of incoming healthcare workers, the burden of managing one's own health, therapy, and medical transactions will increasingly fall on the patient, their family and care managers. A multitude of new systems for personal health management are being developed and it will be critical that these systems are responsive to the unique and specific needs of all people and perhaps more importantly those who are the most at-risk. As an initial step toward identifying core system requirements, interviews with care managers and administrators of a personal health information system (PHIS) for use with migrant farm workers was conducted providing preliminary recommendations toward the development of a framework for effective use of PHIS within diverse and underserved populations. Initial findings indicate that PHIS within these types of communities will exist not so much as an isolated tool for health management, but moreover an artifact for bridging health information communication between patients and their healthcare providers.