There is a growing wealth of research to say that the psychological and social landscape of a patient’s life is the key to better health outcomes. A doctor needs to discern the unique health needs of each patient to create a map to the right kind of support, notes an article in StartUp Health.
For a person living with Type 1 diabetes, health outcomes for diabetes patients have not shifted in the last 20 years, possibly because when a patient comes in to talk to their provider about their diabetes, the only thing discussed is their glycaemic numbers. There is no time to figure out how to achieve behavioural changes or what support a patient needs to access and understand new diabetes technology or how family dynamics might hinder compliance to recommendations. There is no time for a doctor to fullfill their mission to improve the health of their patients.
To address this, Katharine Barnard, PhD, has designed — and clinically validated — Spotlight-AQ, a new way for patients to communicate their needs to physicians. The result is an assessment tool that helps patients feel heard and doctors feel empowered to care.
Spotlight-AQ is a pre-clinical assessment platform that identifies what a patient and healthcare provider need to focus on for better management of chronic diseases such as diabetes. It helps doctors provide the right care to their patients through immediately available psychosocial resources mapped to the unique needs of each patient — precision medicine — and helps them provide it within the current constraints of medical practice, reducing the burden of care for providers while improving patient results. “Our goal,” Barnard explains, “is to focus the consultation so that healthcare providers can deliver the care that needs to be delivered.”
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