offering medical information to patients by physician recommendation

What is it about?

Information therapy is a new service which is offered in collaboration with physician, patient and information professionals to patients, in order to help them to involve with their health promotion and control of diseases. We have surveyed the India and Iran hospital libraries and university libraries to understand if their librarians are delivering such Information therapy services or if they are interested in offering such a service? What are the problems towards delivering information therapy service in these two countries? We found there is rarely a formal and defined service with the name of information therapy services in these countries but librarians are interested in offering information therapy service, and they often offer information to patients informally if they ask information. There are few famous libraries in Iran and some accredited hospital in India with information to patient services in specialty hospitals ( with chronic and rare diseases, and children hospitals). Also some hospitals offer some sort of information to patients through their website but not with doctor recommendation (prescription). We also found that in both countries librarian are interested in delivering information therapy services. The most important problem against these services is lack of organizational support, lack of patient information database, co-operation of physician, variety of language that need prompt translation of information to different dialects.

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Why is it important?

Patient are always interested in understanding the cause of their illness, the different ways to treatment (treatment modalities), the cos effectiveness of each treatment methods, and the chance of each method in successful treatment and survival. But doctors do not have time to explain all these subjects to them. If they want to go to find answer to their questions it will take time, in addition they will not be sure if their own findings are accurate or no. so they will again need some additional consolation with their doctors to come to conclusion that which treatment choice works well with their current health condition. Therefore if a doctor and information specialist collaboratively provide patients with these specific information this will ensure that patient will be informed and empowered with essential knowledge and can collaborate with physician about his or her treatment process to reach to a better health and better control of diseases.

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