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Developing Informatics Tools and Strategies for Consumer-centered Health Communication

^a Division of Specialized Information Services, National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD
^b Office of Communications and Public Liaison, National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD
^c Aquilent, Inc., Laurel, MD
^d School of Library and Information Studies, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI
^e School of Information Systems and Technology, Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, CA
^f Decision Systems Group, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA.

^_* Correspondence: Dr. Alla Keselman, 2 Democracy Plaza, Suite 510, 6707 Democracy Boulevard, MSC 5467, Bethesda, MD, 20892 (Email: keselmana{at}mail.nih.gov).

Received for publication: 02/01/08; accepted for publication: 04/05/08.

As the emphasis on individuals' active partnership in health care grows, so does the public's need for effective, comprehensible consumer health resources. Consumer health informatics has the potential to provide frameworks and strategies for designing effective health communication tools that empower users and improve their health decisions. This article presents an overview of the consumer health informatics field, discusses promising approaches to supporting health communication, and identifies challenges plus direction for future research and development. The authors' recommendations emphasize the need for drawing upon communication and social science theories of information behavior, reaching out to consumers via a range of traditional and novel formats, gaining better understanding of the public's health information needs, and developing informatics solutions for tailoring resources to users' needs and competencies. This article was written as a scholarly outreach and leadership project by members of the American Medical Informatics Association's Consumer Health Informatics Working Group.