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Diabetes-specific personal health records may improve health management
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The use of web-based personal health records linked to electronic medical records may increase the rate of diabetes-related medication adjustments, according to recent data.
Researchers at the Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School and other sites in Massachusetts conducted a randomized, controlled trial and enrolled participants from 11 primary care centers within the Partners HealthCare system. Of those eligible for enrollment, 244 patients with diabetes were included.
The researchers randomized the practices into one of two groups: an intervention arm, which offered a diabetes-specific personal health record program, or a control arm, which offered a new personal health record program to review and update family history and health maintenance prior to appointments. The diabetes-specific health record program offered patient-tailored decision support and a “Diabetes Care Plan” that patients could complete and send electronically before an upcoming appointment.
Compared with nonparticipants, those included in the study were younger (mean age 56.1 years vs. 60.3 years) and lived in higher income neighborhoods ($53,784 vs. $49,713) but had similar baseline glycemic control, according to the researchers.
Diabetes treatment adjustments occurred more often among patients in the intervention arm (53% vs. 15%; P<.001), compared with controls. Though after one year, the researchers reported insignificant differences in risk factor control between the two groups (P=.53).
“Low rates of online patient account registration and good baseline control among participants limited the intervention’s impact on overall risk factor control,” the researchers wrote.
Arch Intern Med. 2008;168:1776-1782.