Tons of money has been poured into digital health technologies, from electronic health records to a smartphone case capable of taking an electrocardiogram. But not everyone may benefit, and e-health interventions may widen, not shrink, health disparities.
Patients who were poor, black, older, unmarried or on Medicare or Medicaid were less likely to use an electronic health record portal to manage their chronic kidney disease, according to a study published Thursday in the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.
That's especially worrisome because there are already big differences along race and socioeconomic lines when it comes to chronic kidney disease, says senior author Khaled Abdel-Kader. "When you see these disparities sort of reinforced by new technological disparities, that is a bit worrisome that we may be taking a step back," says Abdel-Kader, who is also an assistant professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University.
The study looked at roughly 2,800 patients at four university-affiliated nephrology offices in western Pennsylvania from 2010 through 2012. The online portal gave patients the ability to look at lab results, communicate with their providers, get prescription refills, review their medical information, schedule or change appointments and more.
[For more of this story, written by Lynne Shallcross, go to http://www.npr.org/sections/he...ple-who-need-it-most]
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