Empowering the Patient with Informatics

From 1975-2006 medical doctor Tom Ferguson, “Doc Tom” studied and wrote about how to empower the medical consumer. Though he himself is no longer alive, his pioneering work is alive and well. In 1993 “Doc Tom” organized the world’s first conference to help medical consumers gain more medical knowledge from computer systems. One of the many advantages of Fergusen writing books and starting a patient-informational blog, is that his work can continue to empower patients today and into the future. On his e-patients.net website, Ferguson states that he created the term, “…e-patients to describe individuals who are equipped, enabled, empowered and engaged in their health and health care decisions.”

He was not only a physician, but for the last fifteen years of his life he also lived as a patient with multiple myeloma. During his life with cancer he was able to work toward his vision of health care being an equal partnership between e-patients and health professionals. In Ferguson’s e-book “e-Patients: How they can help us heal healthcare he describes the changes in history from when the patient was totally physician-dependent for information about their diagnosis and procedures to the advent of the internet search-engines that serve an ever-increasing number of consumers surfing the internet for answers about their illness. Instead of the internet search-engines replacing the doctor, reputable medical websites can serve as support for the physician, nurse and patient.

Part of becoming a LPN/LVN involves practicing effective patient-education during the training at an LVN/LPN school. In 1999 Doc Tom was honored with another name “Online Health Hero” by the Intel Corporation’s Health Initiative Project. This award was given to him for his work in the field of health informatics. Health informatics brings both information technology together with healthcare concerns to assist a variety of healthcare professionals and their patients. Medical doctors, dentists, veterinarians, and nurses can benefit from having access to this technology. At Gurnick Academy of Medical Arts, computers are just one resource available to the students to search for healthcare information, and also assist with searching for a LVN/LPN job.

As health informatics is becoming more popular amongst nurses, there are professional organizations such as, the ANIA-CARING to advance the field of nursing informatics through communication, education, research and professional activities. You can visit the ANIA-CARING website at ania-caring.org to read about more information about the growing field of nursing informatics.