Does mHealth Increase or Decrease Doctors Power Over Patients?


Does this tweet rub you the wrong way?

The idea of my doctor controlling me rubs me really wrong. There is nothing in this world that I abhor more than the idea of someone controlling me. There’s probably a reason that I work for myself as a blogger, but I digress.

Maybe control is the wrong word here. Doctors have a tremendous amount of influence over patients. I know that I trust my doctor to do what’s right for me. I go into the patient experience basically trusting my physician. I don’t think that mHealth changes that trust. I guess in many ways you could describe my view as a trust but verify positioning. mHealth helps me to verify much quicker. I think that’s a great thing.

What mHealth does do is hold doctors more accountable for the service they provide. This happens in many ways in mHealth. As I mentioned, it helps patients verify what they’ve been told by their doctor. mHealth also makes accessing and doing physician reviews much easier. Whether you like them or not, they’re here to stay and people are going to look at them. Doctors are going to have to be accountable for what’s said on those. Those are just a couple of examples.

I don’t think doctors should fear a loss of control thanks to mHealth. However, they should consider how mHealth will hold them more accountable for the work they do. That will be a dramatic shift for many doctors.