Project HealthDesign Overview
Project HealthDesign is a groundbreaking national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) designed to spark innovation in personal health information technology. The program advances a vision of personal health records (PHRs) as springboards for action and improved health decision making—with the patient at the center of the design process.
Through the program’s 2006–2008 round of funding, nine grantee teams embarked on a user-centered design process to create information technology (IT) tools—from a cell phone-enabled medication management system that alerts children with cystic fibrosis when to take certain medicines to a personal digital assistant that tracks self-reported pain and activity data. Now in its second phase (2010–2012), Project HealthDesign’s current grantee teams are examining how personal health technology tools can collect and integrate observations of daily living—or ODLs—into personal health decision-making and clinical care.
Examining Observations of Daily Living (ODLs)
A key learning from the first round and focus of the second round of grants is that collecting ODLs may be the most important feature of PHRs and their applications.
ODLs are sensations, feelings, thoughts, attitudes and behaviors that provide cues to a person about their health state. Grantees are working with patients with two or more chronic diseases as well as a clinical partner to identify which ODLs patients see as valuable and how they can be collected and interpreted by patients and clinicians to result in better, timelier care.
Exploring Legal and Policy Issues
Health information and privacy experts at Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP, and the Center for Democracy & Technology are helping the teams integrate ODLs into clinical practice workflow while taking current privacy and security laws into consideration. The lessons learned from analyzing these issues will then be shared to inform policy discussions that may govern the exchange of ODLs and other information in PHRs.
Keeping Pace with Emerging Technologies
Grantees consult with Sujansky & Associates and the Health 2.0 Accelerator to ensure their solutions are utilizing and integrating with emerging technologies and commercial personal health IT services. Grantee solutions are involving sensor technology, a variety of smart phone platforms and services such as TheCarrot.com, Google Health and Microsoft HealthVault, to name a few.
