The general physical is the most important medical visit for the delivery of preventive services including cancer prevention and early detection. Unfortunately, using current office systems, physicians have difficulty delivering the preventive services patients are eligible to receive. Advances in interactive information technology offer great potential for improving the delivery of preventive services. In the Decisions About Preventive Services study, we found that time physicians and patients spend on assessing the patient's eligibility and preferences for preventive services during the general physical visit competes with time for prevention delivery. The goal of this research is to develop the PreventIT prototype, an interactive, IT-based system that will be useful for improving delivery of preventive services by minimizing the time of eligibility assessment and maximizing the time for prevention delivery. The PreventIT system will be tailored to: 1) information organization, and 2) display preferences of physicians and patients. The system will include access to post- visit health behavior change programs and relevant health information. Secondary aims are to assess patients', physicians', and office staffs' views on the preferred features of PreventIT prototype including access to appropriate behavior change programs and relevant health information. PreventIT will be developed by HealthMedia, Inc. using existing health risk assessment materials developed previously and prevention guidelines from the United States Preventive Services Task Force. Focus groups will be conducted with physicians and their staff, and with patients to develop and refine PreventIT systems, graphical images, and output. Using individual interviews with physicians and patients, the PreventIT prototype's value will be assessed as physicians and patients use the PreventIT prototype. After this Phase I project, in Phase II, we propose to develop fully the PreventIT functionality, and anticipate testing PreventlT's effectiveness in a randomized controlled trial. Ultimately, PreventIT will help maximize the time for delivering recommended prevention, while minimizing physician time spent in preventive services eligibility assessment and charting. As 16.8% of ambulatory visits (148 million in 2001) in the US are for general physical evaluations and physicians experience pressures to employ office IT systems, the proposed product has significant market and research potential.
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