Do you remember the worries about getting different health care software systems to work with each other as health care providers starting moving away from paper? It's still a problem, but Joanne Rohde's company, Axial Exchange, is working to cure that problem not only as an entrepreneur but also because she has personal reasons to see health care providers communicate better with each other. In a 2012 interview for Huffington Post, she said, "While I was working for Red Hat, I got very sick... I ultimately had to go to 10 doctors to be diagnosed. Going from doctor to doctor, I could not believe I had to start over each time. No one actually talks to each other I became convinced that if I had had all the information, I probably would have been able to figure it out faster." In fact, Joanne got so sick that she quit her job as Red Hat COO after four years with the company. Once she started getting decent treatment for her Fybromyalgia and started getting better, she decided to apply open source principles to health care IT -- and to start a new company to do it. Opensource.com talked with Joanne in September 2013, and in January 2014 she talked with Health Care Finance News for an article titled Patients key to reducing readmissions. A phrase Joanne seems to be using a lot lately is "patient engagement," which has become a major part of Axial Exchange's work to improve communications not only between different health care providers but also between those providers and their patients. Update: 02/05 20:16 GMT by T : If you're seeing this post on beta.slashdot.org, note that we're still ironing out the details of video display here. You can view the video on tv.slashdot.org, instead. Please pardon our dust.

Robin Miller:This is Joanne Rohde who is the Founder and CEO of Axial Exchange a company thats busily working to make it easier for healthcare providers to share healthcare records, that is your patient records safely, securely and quickly. She was recently quoted as saying patients are the key to reducing readmissions How is that? What does that mean?

Joanne Rohde:Well, I think that we are moving from what I call the myth of the Dr. Welby healthcare system, and I think it was always a myth that there is this all-knowing physician thats going to take care of you and your family to the reality that we are a nation of chronic disease. As we jokingly say sometimes no one gets well in the hospital, what do we mean? You might be diagnosed in the hospital, you might get patched up in the hospital, you might get your tests taken, but you get well once you leave. If you get well. And healthcare really hasnt recognized that yet. And so they dont really meet the patients where they live and where they improve

The second thing in this parochial view of patients is this idea that patients really cant understand what they need to take care of their health. And that is just a myth, because any sick person Ive ever talked to wants nothing more than to get better. And they are much more vested in that than the healthcare provider, I dont care what economic incentives we change in this country, your physician is not living your life.

And then thirdly, I think the healthcare organizations have not done the minimal job of trying to see the world through the lens of the patient. So even though were starting to make progress in selling to healthcare organizations I often hear the patient relationship referred to as the last mile. So whats their view of the world? Their view of the world is: Here is the hospital, we are theheartof the world, youre going to come in here and were going to fix you up. First were going to fix whats going on thats wrong in our hospital, then were going to fix whats going wrong between the hospital and the other docs.

And then when we think weve got that, were going to talk to you, the patient. Instead of going the other way around and going, Well, wait a minute, this just isnt working, it isnt working where we are first place in costs, we are37th place inresultshow are we going to really check this? We are a nation of chronic diseases, theres nothing anybody can do in my care thats going to change that. Thats the question that we got to be able to answer as a country. And it is with the patient.

But where it is supposed to be a relationship between the healthcare providers and the patient gets to I think three different things: Teach me, engage me, and track me. And what that means is essentially is starting with the teaching, tell me what I need to know about my disease, let me learn, I might not have been reading it before I got sick, probably not, but now that I am sick, if you give it to me in a way that I can understand it I will learn it. So the big phrase there is in a way that I can understand it. Everybody has had that experience of standing in a doctors office with them going through the language of Greys Anatomy and you go What?, thats why part of the reason why we only maintain 8% of what we hear in a hospital situation when we get home.

The second is we dont do normal teaching even if we have the ability to get the phrases we dont teach that, we dont use testing, we dont use any of the things that we know get people to learn, so we dont employ any of those techniques. So it is not surprising that people dont really understand about their illnesses because they do not really talk about them when it comes right down to it.

The second in terms of engage me, comes to the, how are we going to work together, and that has everything to do with building a care team. So its not just the doctor you see, but do I have a physical therapist, do I have a mental health professional, have I seen a nutritionistall the pieces that youre going to need to get engaged in taking care of your own health and how do they share information.

And then finally track me, and I think there is a lot of proof coming thats not just for triathletes, I think that whether we like it or not anytime you ever written down everything you eat all day long, and its a pain to do so, anytime youve ever tracked how many steps you take, it really teaches you about yourself. And normally you can just ignore it, but if youre sick you might want to change it. So the measurement is very key. So those are really the three buckets, I think that we have to address if we are going to get patients to take responsibility in a way removed from a lose-lose situation, which is where I think healthcare is today, to a win-win situation where theres something in it for both the patients and the providers.

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Former Red Hat COO Helps Health Care Providers Work Together (Video)