1997 Partnerships for Networked Consumer Health Information Conference

Summaries of Plenary Sessions and Breakout Sessions

Customizing Information #3: Using Interactive Environments to Change Behaviors

Wednesday, April 16, 1997
9:30-11:00 AM

Moderator: Alan R. Andreasen, PhD, Professor of Marketing and Associate Dean, Georgetown University School of Business

Speaker: Timothy Kieschnick, Strategic Development Manager, Interactive Technologies Initiative, Kaiser Permanente, "Technology-Supported Patient Empowerment: What’s Real, What’s Vaportalk"

Speaker: Deryk Van Brundt, DrPH, Research Fellow, University of California at Berkeley, "Using Networked Interactive Environments to Change Lifestyle and Environmental Risk Factors"

Speaker: Christopher J. Dede, EdD, Senior Program Director, National Science Foundation, "Emerging Technologies for Learning"

Statement of the Subject

This session analyzes and discusses the theory, practice and future technologies that use interactive environments to change behavior. The speakers have a wide range of experience thinking and writing about and using such technologies.

Key Issues

In his presentation, Deryk Van Brundt discusses the underlying theories of individual and group behavior change in health, and asks: can interactive technologies take advantage of these models to improve the health of the general public? He considers four issues:

1. lack of access;
2. questions of quality of information and decision support;
3. concerns about the confidentiality of personal information; and
4. the lack of information standards for longitudinal tracking and data compatibility with clinical information systems.

He proposes different roles for key players. The private sector should continue its path of innovation and simultaneously be made aware of the responsibility of carefully handling health information. Government agencies should:

1. legislate clear guidelines for confidentiality of health information;
2. explore methods for how agencies might provide guidance on and/or review of quality of information; and
3. continue to fund research into information standards especially those directed towards integrating or extending clinical information standards to emerging consumer and community health information standards.

NGO's should continue to fund public access projects and evaluation of emerging consumer and community health information systems.

Christopher Dede describes a series of innovative projects in advanced technologies for learning that the National Science Foundation has funded. Many ideas from these projects generalize beyond science, math, and engineering education to leverage learning in other domains, such as health. He describes a number of "lessons learned" from these NSF initiatives.

Timothy Kieshnick discusses the current status of interactive environments. Most of the work being done in this area takes the form of white papers, academic studies, and technology development. Very little has been implemented with significant numbers of real patients/consumers. A few important new projects show what needs to happen for interactive health environments to make real differences in the lives of large numbers of people. Organizations that provide health care must integrate interactive environments with traditional care delivery. Consumers must be given better mechanisms for locating relevant, trusted information. Back-end staffing and minute operational details must receive at least as much attention and funding as technology development. Kieshnick concludes that online interactions with real people are critical to the user's experience.

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