AI Article Synopsis
- Families play a crucial role in influencing individual health choices, yet healthcare predominantly targets individual treatment rather than family dynamics.
- The concept of family informatics is proposed to expand health informatics by incorporating family roles and necessitating new digital services to support family health needs.
- Digital tools can enhance family health through monitoring, communication, decision-making, and illness management, potentially addressing chronic health issues and improving personal health management.
Article Abstract
While families have a central role in shaping individual choices and behaviors, healthcare largely focuses on treating individuals or supporting self-care. However, a family is also a health unit. We argue that family informatics is a necessary evolution in scope of health informatics. To deal with the needs of individuals, we must ensure technologies account for the role of their families and may require new classes of digital service. Social networks can help conceptualize the structure, composition, and behavior of families. A family network can be seen as a multiagent system with distributed cognition. Digital tools can address family needs in (1) sensing and monitoring; (2) communicating and sharing; (3) deciding and acting; and (4) treating and preventing illness. Family informatics is inherently multidisciplinary and has the potential to address unresolved chronic health challenges such as obesity, mental health, and substance abuse, support acute health challenges, and to improve the capacity of individuals to manage their own health needs.
Download full-text PDF |
Source |
|---|---|
| http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9196680 | PMC |
| http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jamia/ocac049 | DOI Listing |
Publication Analysis
Top Keywords
Similar Publications
Want AI Summaries of new PubMed Abstracts delivered to your In-box?
Enter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!