Meaningful use stage 2 sets the bar of 5% portal access for patient engagement and stage 3 raises the bar to 25%. What does it take to drive the adoption curve?

There are multiple factors that help the adoption curve to take off. The three key factors that are very important are:

   1. Access: The key question is what information and resources are made available for the patients?

   2. Value: The key question is based on the data that is made available, what is the value for the patients?

   3. Experience: The key question is how seamless experience does the patient have while accessing information and the experts?

While today, the primary focus is to increase access to information by providing a portal to your information system, it will be difficult for adoption to take off if value and experience are not focused on.

Enabling a portal to your information system is the starting point. Providing value added capabilities such as collaboration capabilities in your portal to communicate with your care teams increases the value for the patients. Once these capabilities are provided anytime, anywhere and on any device, with a seamless experience, patients will start using these systems. Enabling continuity of care from the hospital room to the patient's home and enabling the data to be seamlessly available in the portal when the patient is discharged enables a higher experience. In the era of social media, a great experience leads to more influence with other patients and the adoption continues to grow.

Checkout the Cisco booth (#1301) to learn more about how Cisco is enabling access, value and experience leveraging its solutions at the American Telehealth Association (ATA) conference 2015 currently underway from May 3-5, 2015 in Los Angeles.