title: Personal health monitoring - exploiting the power of the personal telephone.
abstract: Many health issues that we currently face are related to our lifestyle choices. Educating patients can help them to make better informed health decisions. The internet and smartphones, mobile telephones that perform many of the functions of a computer, are becoming more accessible to the majority of the population. Applications on smartphones and professional health websites can signpost patients to trusted information and allow them to co-produce records. Empowering patients, staff and organizations through enabling access to records and understanding, building a partnership trust and the use of social media can enable people to do more and hopefully improve outcomes. In this article, I describe the steps we have taken to facilitate such interactions within our own primary care practice and the response of patients to these initiatives.
authors.affiliation: Haughton Thornley PPG, Hyde, Manchester, UK amir.hannan@nhs.net.
authors.forename: Amir
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Hannan
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D040421:Cell Phone; D006293:Health Promotion / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D011320:Primary Health Care
keywords: Computers; cancer; clinical studies; diabetes; laboratory methods