Patient-Centered Health Care Systems

In the last decade, patient-centered care as well as the empowerment of patients to actively participate in their own health maintenance and recovery have become cornerstones of a high-quality health care service provision. These concepts are both promoted and demanded by health policy. The transformation from an institution-based and paternalistic care perspective to a more patient-oriented perspective enables patients to become co-managers of their individual care process in an integrated health care network of interdisciplinary care providers. Positive effects of these developments, such as increased patient and provider satisfaction, more efficient resource allocation and improved health outcomes, have already been confirmed in research. Despite this existing evidence, implementing patient-centered care in practice remains a challenge. In this line of research - considering health networks as socio-technical information systems - we address patient-centeredness, -participation and -empowerment in health care. Especially the aspects of how digital technologies and health applications can enable and improve these aspects are contemplated.

Topic areas

Within the research line of patient-centered health information systems, the researchers in our Digital Health group especially address the following topics:

• Patient Engagement, Patient Empowerment, Shared Decision-Making
• Patient Pathways   
• Patient Portals   
• Patient Safety   
• Health Care Networks

Aspects of model-based health care information system analysis and design, possibilities of digitalization as well as evaluation are addressed.

Selection of key Projects

• Digitaler FortschrittsHub Gesundheit MiHUBx
• QPath4MS (Pathway-based Quality Management in the Care of Patients with Multiple Sclerosis)
• European Joint Action iPAAC (Development and Implementation of Patient Pathways in European Comprehensive Cancer Care Networks)

Selection of main publications

Richter, P. & Schlieter, H. (2021). Patient pathways for comprehensive care networks - A development method and lessons from its application in oncology care. In: Proceedings of the 54^th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS 2021): 3753–3763. Link to paper

Hickmann, E., Richter, P. & Schlieter, H. (2021). Let’s get engaged: On the evidence of patient engagement tools and their integration in patient pathways. In: Proceedings of the 16^th International Conference on Wirtschaftsinformatik (WI2021). Link to paper

Benedict, M., Schlieter, H., Burwitz, M., Scheplitz, T., Susky, M., Richter, P. & Ziemssen, T. (2019): Patientenintegration durch Pfadsysteme. In: T. Ludwig, V. Pipek (eds.),
Proceedings of the 14^th International Conference on Wirtschaftsinformatik (WI 2019),
Siegen, Germany: Universitätsverlag Siegen, pp. 927–941. Link to paper

Final theses

To the description of possible theses topics