Technology helps break down barriers between teens, doctors
12:33 p.m. Friday, July 25, 2008
For teenagers, waiting to see the doctor means dreading questions from another privacy-invading adult.
But avoiding certain topics with doctors can hurt teens' health.
"Many of the problems that children and adolescents face are not easily detected in a very brief primary care visit that might only be once a year," said Kelly Kelleher, a pediatrician with Nationwide Children's Hospital.
Enter Kelleher and his Health eTouch System. Developed at the Nationwide Children's Hospital in Ohio, the eTouch gives waiting room patients the ability to answer personal and medical questions on a computer screen, a familiar experience for most teens. The information is sent directly to their doctor, who can then identify high-risk behaviors and evaluate the patient's problems, without an awkward question and answer period.
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"Socially undesirable behaviors like drug-use or high-risk sexual activity or, you know, even crimes, are much more likely to be reported when we don't have to face people directly and say those words," Kelleher said.
As he wrote in the journal Pediatrics, Kelleher found that doctors who received information about their patients before seeing them were over two times more likely to actively address the concerns of adolescents than doctors who had received the information a few days later.
"Physicians, when they're given good information, information that's hard to get from children in a normal visit, are very much more willing to start to work with those teens in trying to address those behaviors," he said.
And, aside from improving medical care, Kelleher thinks the eTouch might also make the waiting room a little less boring.
Kelleher wants to get teens even more electronically involved in their medical care by using cell phones and text messaging. They could be used to remind them to take their medications or to not drink alcohol, he said.
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