Flipping primary health care: A personal story

Patient-Centered Care: Transforming the Health Care System in Vietnam With Support of Digital Health Technology

Background

Over the recent decades, Vietnam has attained remarkable achievements in all areas of health care. However, shortcomings including health disparities persist particularly with a rapidly aging population. This has resulted in a shift in the disease burden from communicable to noncommunicable diseases such as dementia, cancer, and diabetes. These medical conditions require long-term care, which causes an accelerating crisis for the health sector and society. The current health care system in Vietnam is unlikely to cope with these challenges.

Objective

The aim of this paper was to explore the opportunities, challenges, and necessary conditions for Vietnam in transforming toward a patient-centered care model to produce better health for people and reduce health care costs.

Methods

We examine the applicability of a personalized and integrated Bespoke Health Care System (BHS) for Vietnam using a strength, weakness, opportunity, and threat analysis and examining the successes or failures of digital health care innovations in Vietnam. We then make suggestions for successful adoption of the BHS model in Vietnam.

Results

The BHS model of patient-centered care empowers patients to become active participants in their own health care. Vietnam’s current policy, social, technological, and economic environment favors the transition of its health care system toward the BHS model. Nevertheless, the country is in an early stage of health care digitalization. The legal and regulatory system to protect patient privacy and information security is still lacking. The readiness to implement electronic medical records, a core element of the BHS, varies across health providers and clinical practices. The scarcity of empirical evidence and evaluation regarding the effectiveness and sustainability of digital health initiatives is an obstacle to the Vietnamese government in policymaking, development, and implementation of health care digitalization.

Conclusions

Implementing a personalized and integrated health care system may help Vietnam to address health care needs, reduce pressure on the health care system and society, improve health care delivery, and promote health equity. However, in order to adopt the patient-centered care system and digitalized health care, a whole-system approach in transformation and operation with a co-design in the whole span of a digital health initiative developing process are necessary.

Toward Comprehensive Patient-Centric Care by Integrating Digital Health Technology With Direct Clinical Contact in Australia

Background

There is an escalating crisis in health care, locally and internationally. The current health care model is unable to meet the increasing health care demands.

Objective

The aim of this study was to reconceptualize the provision of health care to produce better outcomes at no greater cost, by placing individuals in the position of authority to direct their own care, in a personalized, integrated health care system.

Methods

In this study, we used the Australian health care system as a model. We reviewed the current landscape of digital health in Australia and discussed how electronic medical records (EMRs) can be further developed into a personalized, integrated health care system.

Results

Some components of an EMR and digital health system are already being used in Australia, but the systems are not linked. A personalized, integrated health care model that is responsive to consumer needs requires not just a passive repository of medical information; it would require a team approach, including the government, health care funders, industries, consumers and advocacy groups, health care professionals, community groups, and universities.

Conclusions

Implementation of a personalized, integrated health care system can result in reduced pressure on the current health care system, and it can result in the delivery of best-practice health care, regardless of location. Importantly, a personalized, integrated health care system could serve as an education platform, “upskilling” not only clinicians but also, more importantly, patients and carers by providing them with accurate information about their condition, treatment options, medications, and management strategies. By proposing personalized, integrated health care, we offer an intelligent model of health care that is ubiquitous, efficient, and continuously improving.

Flipped classroom instructional approach in undergraduate medical education

Objective:

In this study we implemented the “flipped classroom” model to enhance active learning in medical students taking neurosciences module at Aga Khan University, Karachi.

Methods:

Ninety eight undergraduate medical students participated in this study. The study was conducted from January till March 2017. Study material was provided to students in form of video lecture and reading material for the non-face to face sitting, while face to face time was spent on activities such as case solving, group discussions, and quizzes to consolidate learning under the supervision of faculty. To ensure deeper learning, we used pre- and post-class quizzes, work sheets and blog posts for each session. Student feedback was recorded via a likert scale survey.

Results:

Eighty four percent students gave positive responses towards utility of flipped classroom in terms of being highly interactive, thought provoking and activity lead learning. Seventy five percent of the class completed the pre-session preparation. Students reported that their queries and misconceptions were cleared in a much better way in the face-to-face session as compared to the traditional setting (4.09 ±1.04).

Conclusion:

Flipped classroom(FCR) teaching and learning pedagogy is an effective way of enhancing student engagement and active learning. Thus, this pedagogy can be used as an effective tool in medical schools.