Perspectives on electronic health information exchange among people affected by cancer.

Abstract

6123 Background: We know little about the people’s attitudes towards electronic health information exchange (EHIE) and less about whether these attitudes differ between healthy individuals and those affected by cancer. A better understanding of these attitudes will help to keep EHIE policy and practice patient-centered. Methods: We used two data sources to investigate perspectives on EHIE; a 2010 survey fielded by LIVESTRONG (the Lance Armstrong Foundation) on EHIE from individuals across the cancer care trajectory (n=7,417) and results from the National Cancer Institute’s 2007 Health Information National Trends Survey (HINTS) providing the same perspectives from the American public. Results: See table. Regarding capabilities of electronic health records (EHR), nearly all respondents to the LIVESTRONG survey “strongly agreed” that privacy is important; more than 70% want EHRs to make information sharing with providers more convenient. Many want to enter their own physical and emotional symptoms into the EHR. Finally, respondents have high confidence that EHIE will improve the quality of their health care. Conclusions: People affected by cancer appear to be eager to leverage EHIE to improve quality of care, facilitate information exchange between their providers, actively self-enter personal data, and have their de-identified data contribute support research. Cancer pts on Rx (n=433) Pts living with active cancer (n=298) Post-treatment survivors (n=2343) No personal hx of cancer (n=4343) American public (HINTS 2007) “Very important” that my health care providers are able to share my medical information with each other electronically 79.8% 82.1% 75.4% 68.7% 47.9% “Very important” that I can get my own medical information electronically 75.1% 81.1% 70.8% 69.8% 51.7% “Strongly agree” that researchers should be able to use my medical information if de-identified 59.4% 70.4% 60.0% 55.6% 32.4%