Allow patients to update their own electronic medical records

Digitalization in healthcare is increasing: examples include the Electronic Medical Record (EMR), teleconsultations, and hospital patient portals. Professor Guus Schoonman, who has accepted the endowed chair in Digital Communication in Clinical Practice, advocates for a role for the patient: they should be enabled to make additions to their own records. Additionally, more attention should be given to the impact of digitalization on healthcare providers, who may experience increased digitalization as a constraint and time burden. Schoonman discusses these points in his inaugural speech on June 21, 2024.

Schoonman focuses on digital collaboration between patient and healthcare provider and on supporting healthcare providers during the digital transition. This can be achieved through ’shared record keeping’, where the patient plays a more active role alongside the healthcare provider. This approach has several benefits. The patient becomes more knowledgeable about his of her medical condition and more involved in his or her care.

For successful shared decision-making, it is important that healthcare providers understand the patient’s perspective on their medical issue. The central idea of Schoonman’s ’Prepare project’ is to ask patients to add comments to the referral letter from their general practitioner to the hospital, thereby including their opinions, values, preferences, and expectations in the EMR.

A second follow-up project, ’Digital onboarding,’ allows hospitals to increasingly use the patient portal as a communication channel between the patient and the healthcare provider. When a patient visits the hospital for the first time, they can fill in many of the required details at home.

Core values in healthcare

However, what is beneficial for the healthcare system or an organization is not necessarily useful for an individual healthcare provider. For example, a well-functioning EMR can make a healthcare organization much more efficient, transparent, or better manageable, but for an individual healthcare provider, it might feel more like a constraint. Therefore, the impact on the work of the healthcare provider must also be considered when implementing digital innovations in healthcare. Schoonman asserts that core values should always remain paramount when delivering digital healthcare.

Guus Schoonman

Endowed Professor Digital Communication in Clinical Practice

Guus Schoonman (born 1974, Deventer) studied medicine in Leiden, where he also obtained his PhD and completed his neurology training. In 2013 he started working as a neurologist at the Elizabeth-Tweesteden Hospital in Tilburg. He has been appointed from May 2013 as a endowed professor at Tilburg University in the Department of Communication and Cognition at the Tilburg School of Humanities and Digital Sciences.