Patients Have a Right to Know
Every day breast cancer claims the lives of five Polish women due to late diagnosis (www.rakpiersi.pl). The Polish healthcare system should have easy access to information on health protection issues as its priority.
For the time being though, Poles are helpless in the face of a system that hinders access to reliable information on medicines, diseases and health protection. According to the latest Euro Health Consumer Index report, the level of medical care in Polandis among the lowest in Europe. Only Bulgarians and Lithuanians do worse. The gravest problems include lack of sufficient financial resources and limited access to information.
Poles do not contribute to their treatment as active partners. Doctors decide on their own what therapy to follow because patients do not possess sufficient knowledge to suggest alternative methods. Because obtaining a consultation with a specialist is difficult in Poland, we have no chance to talk at ease about our health, clarify our doubts or seek a second specialist opinion.
One-third of the Poles interviewed in the “Diagnoza społeczna 2005”(“Social Diagnosis 2005”) survey said that in the case of health problems they were sometimes at a loss where to look for help. The website is intended to address that issue, as knowledge of a disease is a powerful weapon with which to fight it.
“The www.doz.pl website is designed as a comprehensive resource of health-related information. We want it to significantly complement medical and pharmaceutical care, “ says Wojciech Rosicki, the project coordinator. When educated patients become partners in the treatment process, a therapy may actually deliver better results. An indirect benefit will be savings in the healthcare system. For example, in Polandonly about 30% of all cancer cases are cured because Poles find out about their disease too late. Only one in five patients sees a doctor in the initial stages of cancer, when treatment is often simple and cheap. That early, it is enough to spend a few thousand PLN to save a human life. (IARC report of 2005).
www.doz.pl is to provide support not only to patients but also to healthcare professionals. In Polandthere are some 40,000 doctors, who will be able to register in the site’s database available to patients and offer comments regarding future development of the website. The largest “Database of Doctors and Hospitals” will help patients find their bearings in the Polish healthcare system.
Another section of the site is the “Reading Room” containing abstracts of articles on health-related issues from Polish and foreign press titles, which will be updated every day. The website will also feature the “Health Encyclopaedia” and the “Drug Encyclopaedia”, which will contain exhaustive and updated information on all pharmaceuticals. Thus it will constitute a single source of information on the effects of various drugs, as well as their mutual interactions and cheaper substitutes.
“The quality of information posted on www.doz.pl will be supervised by a team of experts,” says Rosicki. “We want to provide information on serious health conditions, diagnostics and the effects of medicines without using incomprehensible jargon.”
In developed countries communication with patients involves more than just a medical interview. Consumers have wider access to a number of different information sources. According to Internet WorldStatus, the United States remains the world’s leader in terms of Internet usage rates (69.6% of the entire population). Over a half of the interviewed American web users said that information coming from the Internet had changed their attitudes to health and encouraged them to ask their doctors additional questions or verify opinions found on the Internet. In Poland already as much as 51% of households have a computer and the number of Internet users has almost doubled over the past three years - reaching 12 million (SMG/KRC NetTrack, December 2000 – 2006, Megapanel PBI/Gemius, November 2004-2006). “Thanks to rapid diffusion of the Internet in Poland, Polish patients will increasingly resemble patients elsewhere in the world,” observes Rosicki.
A survey carried out by Pew Internet & American Life Project in August 2006 shows that eight out of ten web users treat the Internet as a source of health-related knowledge. Americans search for information about specific diseases, health protection, disease prevention, nutrition and drugs. As much as 58% of all web users admit that information found on the Internet had, at one point or another, influenced their decisions on how to cope with various health conditions. Some of them also said that such information persuaded them to go and see a doctor.
“We want to set new standards in Europe by supporting patients in medical treatment. We are still at the beginning of the road, but we have plenty of ideas and ambitions. The solutions used in designing the www.doz.pl website will be among the best in the world,” ends Rosicki.
