Toward More Precise Health Care Through Relational Mapping.

Area of Science:

• Health Services Research
• Medical Informatics
• Psychosocial Medicine

Background:

• Precision health aims to personalize care using individual variation, but often focuses narrowly on biological factors.
• This reductionist approach overlooks crucial existential and psychosocial dimensions of patient health and experience.
• Existing clinical records often lose vital psychosocial insights during care transitions between systems and settings.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce the relatome as a conceptual framework to systematically record relational patterns in healthcare.
• To extend precision health into the relational domain, enhancing patient experience and treatment effectiveness.
• To facilitate provider coordination and preserve psychosocial insights across diverse care settings.

Main Methods:

• Development of the relatome framework to comprehensively document patient relational patterns.
• Integration of the relatome as a transferable component within the patient's clinical record.
• Incorporation of dynamic updates based on patient feedback and provider observations.

Main Results:

• The relatome provides a systematic method for recording trust-building, information preferences, and decision-making styles.
• It enhances precision in guiding patient experience and improving treatment outcomes by including relational data.
• The framework aids in coordinating provider understanding and retaining psychosocial information across care transitions.

Conclusions:

• The relatome framework offers a novel approach to deepen personalization in precision health by incorporating relational dynamics.
• Its implementation requires addressing significant conceptual, technical, systemic, equity, and evaluation challenges.
• Successfully integrating the relatome can lead to more holistic, effective, and patient-centered healthcare.