e-Patients Live Longer: The Complete Guide for Managing Healthcare Using Technology

“Good health is a treasure and doesn’t come by chance. In her book, “e-Patients Live Longer,” Nancy B. Finn, M.Ed., introduced us to ways to leverage technology to handle our health needs. The author described an e-Patient as an individual who actively participates in his or her healthcare decisions and has decided to leverage advances in technology to take maximum care of their health and that of their family. This book discussed health information technology, participatory medicine, and the need to adopt them. This book says health information technology started with the invention of the telephone, followed by other mainstream digital communication platforms like email, patient portals, social media, etc. Also, this book touches on choosing a hospital, patient safety, telehealth, retail clinics, health information privacy, and health insurance.

In emphasizing participatory medicine and the benefits of leveraging information technology to deliver healthcare services, this book revealed that one’s medical history and story are what the doctor considers the most before making the correct diagnosis. This emphasizes the need for participatory medicine.

Before now, I never knew medical errors and diseases caused by poor hygiene in the hospital contributed to most patient deaths. Also, I didn’t know that pharmacies can leverage health records for their own gain if they have access to health data.

There are things I find interesting in this book. The author painstakingly researched the major illnesses (like cancer, diabetes, and heart-related issues) and where one can turn online for help. This book has some real-life medical cases and also gives tips on choosing the best health insurance and doctors for ourselves. It listed the insurance plans and the necessary ticks before choosing one. Also, for the medical terminologies used in this book, there is a glossary that perfectly explains their meanings.

I learned from this book that we know ourselves much better than the physician; hospitals are not safe havens of care. The doctor can only help us get better depending on our willingness to communicate our problems and receive treatment. Also, it is very important to have an ICE (in case of emergency) contact on our phones. These are people who can say something about our health in case of an emergency. The author went deep when discussing topics in this book. I have nothing to dislike in this book. The editing of this book is professionally done; I encountered some negligible errors while reading through it. With regard to the above, this book deserves five out of five stars.

I recommend this book to healthcare professionals, sick patients, or anyone interested in developing innovations in one of the major areas that will disrupt healthcare in the future. This book has ideas on how you can innovate in the future of healthcare.”

“e-Patients Live Longer is an valuable resource for patients looking to navigate the particular challenges of health care in the twenty-first century.

Nancy B. Finn’s patient guide e-Patients Live Longer argues that digital communications can improve health care.

Asserting that a well-informed patient is an empowered one, this book aims to provide information and resources for the better management of one’s health through digital communication with health-care providers. In total,it covers eleven specific technologies impacting individual and general health care. Its topics include the importance of keeping digitized health records in secure portals, using the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina as an example; clear explanations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act; questions to ask oneself before choosing a health-care provider; and methods for distinguishing between reliable and unreliable web sources, with an entire chapter dedicated to a list of trustworthy websites.

The book is filled with practical and actionable advice. Because of the balanced way in which it addresses both the positives and the negatives of technological advances in the health-care industry, it is convincing both in discussing the importance of open digital communication between patients and their health-care providers and in addressing related, technology-fed dangers to patient privacy. And its formatting is usefully consistent, with self-explanatory subheadings followed by patient anecdotes that are complemented by data in tables and charts. Bullet-point summaries make it accessible as a reference text too.

In its forward-looking conclusion, the book speculates about what health care will look like in a few decades, extolling the benefits of artificial intelligence and greater technological advances in the medical field. The result is an optimistic guide, though one that falters in its last pages by ignoring the possible dangers of the changes it anticipates, eschewing the caution reflected in most of the text. This extends to the hypothetical example of microchips that the book posits could be embedded in people’s arms upon their births in the near future-used to to help track their medical and biological records along with their birth certificates. While such possibilities may raise alarm in general audiences, these are assuaged with the presumption that the technology would be controlled by patients themselves and with the assurance that the hypothetical websites would be secure-beliefs that are at odds with a previous chapter, dedicated to addressing security risks and the the dangers inherent to such systems.”

e-Patients Live Longer is an valuable resource for patients looking tonavigate the particular challenges of health care in the twenty-firstcentury.
CAROLINA CIUCCI (August 14, 2023)

Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.