Looking to tomorrow’s healthcare today: a participatory health perspective

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Health systems around the world face the issue of financial and workforce sustainability. Mobile health technologies - those devices which connect health professionals, patients, payers and the many other contributors who make up the health system offer some solutions - not just as 'add ons' but as enablers of real system change. This paper presents a vision for what the health system of the future could be like and emphasises the opportunities for real patient participation in clinical decision-making if the professions can engage the technologies and patients/community in a meaningful way. Predicting the future is never easy but many of the technologies are here now - but how we will use them to make the system more patient friendly, more productive and sustainable is still for discussion. This paper should start that conversation.