Value Proposition
· The first and only multi-media question prompt list
· Helps medical teams identify and address a patient’s unique informational needs
· Provides illness-specific questions to patients in their native language
· Narrated by native speakers
· Relevant questions translated back to English for providers
· Enables the identification of institutional areas for improvement
Unmet Need
There are significant communication barriers between medical teams and families/caregivers with limited English proficiency. Even amongst native speakers, difficult medical topics like disease prognosis, treatment failure, and end-of-life planning result in communication breakdowns between patients and care providers due to an incomplete understanding of the medical procedure, a hesitancy to ask questions, or uncertainty about what questions to ask. Therefore, there is a strong need for resources that not only improve the understanding of medical procedures and ability to ask informed questions, but also focus specifically on achieving this goal for non-English speakers who are disproportionately affected.
Technology Description
Johns Hopkins researchers have developed a multimedia, interactive question prompt list (miQPL) platform allows patients/caregivers to explore subjects related to their health with the purpose of improving patient-provider communication and subsequent patient outcomes. Patients/caregivers can navigate and interact with miQPL: read or listen to questions in their native language (narration provided by native speakers) and save questions they are interested in discussing with their medical team. In addition, the design architecture accounts for at-scale analysis of interactions with miQPL to collect data on platform usage specific to each implementation type that can be studied to better understand community needs.
Stage of Development
Pre-clinical
