Health literacy is part the ability to find, understand, use, and share health information and services to make good decisions about health, part the skills to apply the health information, and part the attitude and culture to do so. Low health literacy, common in the UK (43% struggle with text), leads to poorer health outcomes, unhealthy lifestyles, and difficulty managing conditions, with responsibility shared by individuals, healthcare providers, and organizations to improve access and skills. Health literacy requires critical thinking, communication, and the ability to manage novel and complicated solutions. For citizens, and patients, pre-structured data, information, knowledge, and understanding is facilitated by personal health data from lifelong health records, and access to care pathway explanations and skill sets.
Sharing personal health data with patients from their digital lifelong health records is a fairly novel practice. The utility of patients accessing their digital lifelong health records is facilitated by access to generic health information, personal training, communal relationships, and continued support.
HIFA profile: Richard Fitton is a retired family doctor - GP. Professional interests: Health literacy, patient partnership of trust and implementation of healthcare with professionals, family and public involvement in the prevention of modern lifestyle diseases, patients using access to professional records to overcome confidentiality barriers to care, patients as part of the policing of the use of their patient data Email address: richardpeterfitton7 AT gmail.com