The purpose of DiaTrack is to enhance the availability of patient data for input to the physician’s decision making process. Of course it is not possible to completely handle all types of information with a database and procedural logic. Inevitably physicians must communicate with one another. The problem that DiaTrack presents for communication is one of overload.
Suppose that Physician A sees a patient visualization (Patient X) and finds it interesting for their current problem. However, they have questions pertaining to that Patient X. Because X is not their patient, they have no access to the confidential patient records and they need to ask that patient’s physician (Physician B) a question. This is fine for Physician A, but if Physician B has a patient which is often found to be interesting, Physician B will be bombarded with questions.
DiaTrack solves this problem while preserving physician communication. First, all confidentiality is preserved. A physician viewing results has no idea to what practice or physician any specific patient “belongs”. (The exception is if the patient belongs to the viewer – in that case the viewer can see any patient details.) In order to ask Physician B a question about Patient X, Physician A must send email through DiaTrack.
DiaTrack accepts patient inquiry requests and mediates with Physician B. It is possible that Physician B has already replied to a request concerning the patient. In that case, DiaTrack places the reply in a database and sends the reply out every time a request for that patient comes in. Physician B can effectively send dozens, even hundreds, of replies about a single patient by replying only once to DiaTrack.
Whenever a physician replies to a patient inquiry, they should put in the email whatever it is that they would normally tell another physician about their patient with the understanding that it will help the other physician make a determination about how reliable the treatment model is.
Physician A can send a follow-up request if the pre-recorded reply does not have sufficient detail. A Follow-Up request can only be sent once A has received the initial reply. In the event of a Follow-Up request, B can simply edit the existing email in the database – they never have to start over from a blank screen. DiaTrack will queue the fact that A is interested in patient X. If and when B replies with an update, the updated mail will be sent to A (and any other interested physicians) automatically.
If the recorded reply in the database is old, Physician A will get the current data and Physician B will automatically receive an update request from DiaTrack. If the status of the patient hasn’t changed, B can reply that there is no update (and A will be informed that the data they have already received is valid). If the status has changed, B can edit the existing email by adding current information. Again, DiaTrack sends the updated email to all other physicians who have expressed an interest in this patient. Currently, “old” is defined as longer than 3 months for a living patient. If a patient has died, an update later than the date of death is never considered “old”.
The following diagram depicts the Inter-Practice Communication Model used by DiaTrack to facilitate professional communication between physicians while preserving anonymity and minimizing the burden on any one physician:
A similar strategy can be pursued to build a "patient FAQ" instead of maintaining an email. In this case, physicians would pose specific questions to the patient's doctor. As each question is answered, they become part of an FAQ document attached to the patient. Any physician would be able to see the FAQ and pose new questions. When a question is answered, the FAQ is updated, and the inquiring physician (as well as any other physicians subscribed to the question) is emailed the new answer.