Structured documentation of lifestyle factors and disease prevention
The National Board of Health in Sweden has published draft guidelines for disease prevention methods in healthcare (link below) where focus is on the health risk behaviors, or lifestyle factors; tobacco use, risk alcohol consumption, insufficient physical activity and unhealthy diet.
These are the lifestyle factors that contribute most to the overall disease burden in Sweden and the National Board of Health stresses the importance of healthcare offering activities addressing all four areas in disease preventive purpose. The report also highlights the lack of data sources to systematically document and follow-up disease prevention in healthcare, especially on a national level.
In an attempt to address these needs, SLSO (Stockholms Läns Sjukvårdsområde) are working on supporting structured documentation of health risk behaviors and the measures offered to support lifestyle changes. A set of keywords to be used in the electronic health record when documenting information on patients' lifestyle and the measures taken to decrease health risk behavior have been implemented based on the recommendations given by the National Board of Health. The aim is to structure the documentation of disease prevention to enable follow-up and further development on both local and national levels.
In collaboration with Health Informatics Centre (HIC) a research project is planned based on this initiative. The main objective of the research is to find out how this process can create benefits for different stakeholders, e.g. patients, care providers and care professionals. The aim of the project is therefore not to evaluate the impact of the disease prevention measures, but rather to study how we can use the potential of structured documentation and information and communication technology (ICT) to facilitate and support both the development and follow-up of disease prevention.
Project leader: Ann-Marie Bönström, SLSO; for the research project: Maria Hägglund from HIC
Project start autumn 2011
