JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Engaging patients and making them experts of their condition has been identified as high priority across many medical disciplines. Patient empowerment (PE) improves compliance, patient safety and disease outcome. PE helps the patient in shared-decision-making and become an informed partner of the health care professional (HCP). PE is in jeopardy, if written medical information for patients is getting too complex and confusing. We introduce document engineering methodology (DEM) as a new tool for the health care industry. DEM strictly follows principles of cognitive science and implements neuroscience-based concepts of reading and comprehension. It also follows most recent document design techniques. DEM has been successfully implemented in the aviation-, mining, and oil industries. In these very industries DEM helped to improve user performance, prevent harm and increase safety. We postulate, DEM applied to written documents in health care will immediately help the patient to quickly navigate through complex written information. DEM enables the patient to better comprehend the essence of the medical information. DEM will empower the patient and help to start an informed conversation with the HCP. Ultimately, the patient will become more compliant and adherent. This entire process will support improved outcomes. Our approach is innovative as we take our learning from other industries to health care. We call this cross-industry-innovation. In this manuscript, we provide illustrative examples of DEM in 3 frequent clinical scenarios i) explaining a complex diagnosis for the first time, ii) understanding medical leaflet information, and iii) exploring Cannabis-based medicines. There is urgent need to test DEM in larger clinical cohorts. This manuscript is written following the principles of medical technical writing and comprehension.