January 2017 produced two publications that are likely to add significantly to interest and uptake of ePROMs in 2017.
- Lancet On-line Lead Article of the 8th Jan 2017 was a 4 part paper entitled “Right Care” These papers confirmed again that overuse of healthcare was estimated as 30% of the expenditure on healthcare in developed countries. eHealthier’s ePROM platform addresses this issue in particular the preventive population ePROMs will enable healthcare providers to create and monitor health in their patients individually and in that provider’s patient population. This will begin the transformation from a health system that concentrates on sick treatments to one that begins to create and measure functional health status in individuals. This will automatically result in the prevention of preventable hospital admissions beginning to reduce the largest cohort of overuse expenditure.
- OECD +7 Health Ministerial Statement The health ministers and representative of the 34 OECD members plus 7 other countries released their statement entitled “The Next Generation of Health Reforms” The most significant of these reforms that they will be implementing are:
- Reorienting Health Systems to become more people centred
- Implement new health statistics to measure and compare Patient Reported Experiences and Outcomes in healthcare.
Essentially, they are recommending the implementation of standardised ePROMs across the full gamut of medical conditions and across the OECD. This is reflected in the OECD’s agreement to commission ICHOM to assist in this implementation. eHealthier notes that this paper is called the Next Generation of Health Reforms and feels that eHealthier’s outlined Next generation of ePROMs will significantly enhance this reform agenda.