Thank you Neil and Richard for this excellent development. Empowering the patient by providing information (about her/his case) is extremely important in the journey of treatment and is fully supported. A number of issues that LMICs (including Jordan) face: the ICT infrastructure, the literacy rate, the status of physicians (Gods on earth) and the private sector monopoly. Last week I had a visit to my dentist. He is fantastic as he did explain every thing to me, I did appreciate this. He told me a story of his own father, who was also a dentist. A surgeon did something wrong to the father while operating on him. My dentist was never able to see the surgeon who killed his father despite going to his private clinic especially that the surgeon left the man dead 7 hours before my dentist learned that his father was killed. Ethics, knowledge, accountability and many other factors influence communication between the patient and the treating worker in a LMIC.
Best regards. Najeeb Al-Shorbaji
HIFA profile: Najeeb Al-Shorbaji recently retired from the World Health Organization (WHO), where he has worked since 1988 in different capacities. He was most recently Director of the Knowledge, Ethics and Research Department at WHO headquarters, Geneva. Previously he was Coordinator for Knowledge Management and Sharing in EMRO (Eastern Mediterranean Regional Office), Egypt. He is a member of a number of national and international professional societies and associations specialised in information management and health informatics. He has authored over 100 research papers and articles presented in various conferences and published in professional journals. He is a member of the HIFA Steering Group and the HIFA Working Group on Multilingualism.
http://www.hifa.org/support/members/najeeb
http://www.hifa.org/projects/multilingualism
Email: shorbajin AT gmail.com
