Latinos Online: Summary chart, Pew Internet & American Life Project

We held a successful Advisory Group Meeting of the PCHIT initiative yesterday (and will post about that shortly), and one of the many pearls we received was from Susannah Fox, regarding the characterization of Internet access among populations. Through her research, she characterizes Internet access as a “dimmer” rather than an “on/off” switch.

She presented a visual example to us in a “thermometer” diagram that she created as part of her report on Latinos Online, published in March, 2007. She is planning to produce similar data on Internet access as characterized by device (e.g. cell phone) as well. She’s given us permission to reproduce the visual here.

Ending the use of the term “Digital Divide”

The approach of the Pew Internet and American Life Project seems useful moving forward as we think about bringing patients and their families of all backgrounds into the care experience. With that in mind, I am going to discontinue the use of the term “Digital Divide.” I don’t think it accurately describes Internet access across populations in the United States.

Your comments on this are welcome, of course!

Continuing where I left off last week, with feedback and adjustments from members of the PCHIT Advisory Group:

Susannah Fox is an Associate Director at the Pew Internet & American Life Project, whose work has been very influential in describing people’s use of the Internet.

Susannah just published a report on patients with a Disability or Chronic Disease that we mentioned here previously.

Upcoming work that we will take note of includes work around PHR’s and EHR’s (Susannah is currently a contributor to e-patients.net), and a research agenda that will go beyond measuring simple Internet use. She describes this as “Attitude, Actions, Assets” and is looking at information ecosystems and people. Within these reviews, she will focus on 2 key populations: Latinos, and Teens. Within the teens group, she will be taking a look at gaming, and teens and writing.

It goes without saying that we follow Susannah’s work in a very dedicated fashion. I have been subscribing to the RSS Feeds offered by their site since I started using RSS. The forthcoming reports will offer an important view on PCHIT, especially now that I have returned from Boston and was able to observe care given in leading edge medical centers serving Latino patients, among others.

Key health care leaders are saying the time for PHRs are now. Based on the Boston visit, I am saying the time for multilingual and culturally relevant PHRs is now. We’ll be therefore eagerly awaiting these two new reports on the Pew web site.

Speaking of the Pew web site, Susannah is also managing its redesign, to make the information more modular and accessible, while incorporating the latest Web 2.0 feature. At least that’s our expectation. Given Pew’s current work in informing builders of Internet services for patients, we’ll look forward in how they inform the builders of the communication tools of those builders.