Session S33.7

Mind the Gap

GA L'Abbate*

CNR Institute of Clinical Physiology
Pisa, Italy

Given the complexity of medicine and healthcare today, patients need to become the conscious and informed counterpart to each and every medical decision concerning the diagnostic and therapeutic process of their disease, becoming their own promoters for future measures of prevention. Yet, despite the great advances in the medical field, communication between healthcare providers and users often remains a secondary issue. In order to close this gap in communication, “My Heart” project aimed to provide patients an easy multimedia communication tool that could translate the “obscure” language of cardiology discharge reports into an immediate and comprehensible message. With this program patients can interactively access and explore in a plain yet scientifically rigorous way the basic explanations on the nature and mechanisms of their cardiac disease; patients can also see a detailed 3D, dynamic virtual picture of their diseased heart and all the technological findings and the clinical reasoning that lead to the diagnostic and the therapeutic medical decisions. The information is divided into 5 chapters that can be browsed according to the patient’s interest on topics and details. The opening chapter “my heart” describes the patient’s heart condition; at this chapter the patient can access the subheadings: diagnosis, therapy, and lastly, future medical appointments or tests. At the chapter “ the heart” the patient will find explanations on the medical jargon that doctors use to describe their condition. This will help understand the referrals and results of their medical examinations, and overall, what ischemic heart disease really is. The chapter is divided into two modules: the first describes the basic concepts on heart function and circulation, the second offers a brief glossary of cardiologic terms. This project, winner of the "Pirelli INTERNETional Award" as the best product of multimedia communication of life sciences on May 2006, suggest to complete medical informative system adding communicational tools able to interface all the actors of the health system, starting from patients.

(Abstract Control Number: 256)