Page 62 - Health Literacy, eHealth, and Communication: Putting the Consumer First: Workshop Summary

Health Literacy, eHealth, and Communication: Putting the Consumer First: Workshop Summary

4

Outcomes and Challenges of
eHealth Approaches:

Panel 2

uSINg TECHNOLOgy TO IMPROVE
MIgRANT HEALTH CARE DELIVERy

Cynthia Solomon
Chief executie officer, Access Strategies, inc.

MiVIA is a patient electronic personal health record (PHR) origi-
nally designed to engage a very vulnerable population—migrant and
seasonal farm workers—in their own health care through the use of a
personal health record. It was later expanded to include other vulnerable
populations such as the homeless, those with special needs, women, and
children. The MiVIA project is a collaborative effort of St. Joseph Health
System in Sonoma County, California; the Community Health Resource
Development Center; and Vineyard Workers Services.
In 2002 and 2003 developers of the new system held meetings with
farm workers and settled agricultural workers to explain the concept of
the PHR and to ask them what information they would want to carry with
them and have accessible to them. The developers quickly learned, for
instance, that the participants did not want to be called users or patients
or consumers; they wished to be called members. The members named
the system MiVIA, which means “my way” in Spanish.
MiVIA has evolved over the years. In 2003 it was a consumer portal
for information storage on migrant and farm worker members. By 2005
it included a clinician portal that offered clinicians access to the personal
health record (with member permission), but the data entered were read-

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