Medical Technology and eHealth for Prevention against LifestyleRelated Diseases : A survey of attitudes among health center personnel and patients prescribed with physical activity on prescription (PAP)

Sammanfattning: With an aging population that suffers from comorbidity, healthcare is facing grand challenges. In order to meet the demand, digitalization is thought to be an opportunity. Digitalization of curative care, such as diagnostics and treatment, have been initiated and is today used and appreciated. Preventative care, on the other hand, has not been included in the digital adaptions to the same extent and there are few scientific studies within the area. Nonetheless, a further proactive care that meets patients and healthcare personnel are of interest to several actors. The Swedish Government has a vision that Sweden, in 2025, will be world leading within eHealth. For that to be possible, digital preventative care have to support and complete the preventative work that is performed today. The present study has investigated the attitude towards Connected Medical Devices for Prevention (CMDfP) within the primary care. By a mixed-methodology including questionnaires, the opinions of 24 health center personnel and 17 patients prescribed with Physical Activity on Prescription (PAP) were collected and analyzed. The results show that health center personnel are willing to prescribe connected eHealth devices for prevention and patients are willing to use the devices prescribed. Additionally, among the respondents there is a belief that CMDfP could facilitate in order to increase the adherence to PAP without any major impact on the personnel's workload. By digitalizing preventative care, it is possible that people will be able to live healthier and therefore not require care to the same extent as today. Reasons to the possible results are that digital tools within curative care have been shown to generate positive outcomes to chronically ill patients that utilize home care. Additionally, studies of preventative care have generated positive outcomes to the health of the population in several countries. It is therefore likely that the combination, digital preventative care, would be rapidly relished. These thoughts align with the positive results on attitudes of this study. Before CMDfP could be prescribed to patients, pilot studies have to be performed and new work routines including reimbursement models, have to be established within healthcare. These are all areas of future work within medical engineering.