title: Transforming consumer health informatics through a patient work framework: connecting patients to context.
abstract: Designing patient-centered consumer health informatics (CHI) applications requires understanding and creating alignment with patients' and their family members' health-related activities, referred to here as 'patient work'. A patient work approach to CHI draws on medical social science and human factors engineering models and simultaneously attends to patients, their family members, activities, and context. A patient work approach extends existing approaches to CHI design that are responsive to patients' biomedical realities and personal skills and behaviors. It focuses on the embeddedness of patients' health management in larger processes and contexts and prioritizes patients' perspectives on illness management. Future research is required to advance (1) theories of patient work, (2) methods for assessing patient work, and (3) techniques for translating knowledge of patient work into CHI application design. Advancing a patient work approach within CHI is integral to developing and deploying consumer-facing technologies that are integrated with patients' everyday lives.
authors.affiliation: Department of Public Health Sciences, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, USA.
authors.forename: Rupa S
authors.initials: RS
authors.lastname: Valdez
authors.affiliation: Departments of Medicine, Biomedical Informatics, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA.
authors.forename: Richard J
authors.initials: RJ
authors.lastname: Holden
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Informatics, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA.
authors.forename: Laurie L
authors.initials: LL
authors.lastname: Novak
authors.affiliation: School of Information and School of Public Health, Department of Health Behavior and Health Education, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.
authors.forename: Tiffany C
authors.initials: TC
authors.lastname: Veinot
mesh_terms: D002908:Chronic Disease / Q000628:therapy*; D054626:Consumer Health Information; D006804:Ergonomics; D005190:Family; D006801:Humans; D012648:Self Care; D012984:Software
keywords: Chronic Illness Trajectory; Consumer Health Informatics; Patients and Families; User-Centered Design; Work Systems