Using informatics to engage patients

As a specialty, radiology has spent much of the last two decades implementing information systems that improve departmental efficiency and the ordering provider's access to information. While our patients have realized benefits such as improved access to care and reduced turnaround times, there has been little focus on using these information systems to improve patient engagement. In the last decade, society has shifted. Now, consumers in every industry expect to be able to use technology to help them accomplish different tasks from scheduling to communicating. Medicine, in general, has been slow to respond to the concept of the patient as a consumer. In this manuscript we describe some of the informatics efforts we have employed in our department to improve patient engagement. We present these initiatives, corresponding to each aspect of the radiology value stream, from the patient's point of view.