Thursday, November 5, 2015

Digital literacy and what it means for healthcare

by Courtney Lyles, PhD

Should healthcare organizations be taking a major role in increasing the overall digital literacy of their patients? 

In my last post I talked about how most patients in our health system, the SFHN, want to use the internet to manage their health care and health, but don’t have the proficiency they need to be able to do so. I wanted to take that idea one step further. If our patients often can look something up on Google but don’t know how to use an email account (which is often required for signing up to access your electronic health record online) – should we be providing them with basic technology classes?  The answer I keep coming back to is “yes,” and here are a few reasons why: