4: Health Literacy in the ‘New Normal’…and Opportunities for Technology

The ‘new normal’ of health care places patients at its centre where they co-produce their services and co-create value. New technologies aid in expanding the role of digital solutions towards a more integrated, more inclusive system and enable individuals to take a more active part in their health and make informed health care decisions (Conard, 2019). These technologies will be another focal point in this volume.

The role of patients and the general public has changed within the current scenario of the ‘new normal’ of health care (Marciano et al., 2019). While the ‘new normal’ explicitly seeks to place patients at the centre of their own health care and have them actively participate, co-produce and co-create, this has become a plain fact of our circumstances. Due to an ever more complex and fragmented health care system, an increasing number of media outlets offering health information (of varying quality and reliability), and a rise in chronic conditions for which patients need to coordinate their care, individuals need to learn how to manage their own care (Hersh et al., 2015). Although the ‘new normal’ of health care and the patient engagement and involvement that accompany it are viewed as vital aspects of sustainable health systems, scholars find that some determinants of active patient engagement are still widely neglected by both policymakers and health care professionals. Among these neglected factors, inadequate health literacy proves to be a substantial barrier to patient empowerment (Dirmaier & Härter, 2011; Palumbo et al., 2016). About half of subjects in many study samples have been noted to have low health literacy (Palumbo et al., 2016). Section 4.1 takes a closer look at where the issues arise and how new technologies may solve some.