Enhancing Patient Interactions: The Symptom Questionnaire

Effective communication between patients and clinicians is a cornerstone of quality healthcare. SigmaMD facilitates this by prompting patients to answer a series of questions when they report troubling symptoms at the outset of a new chat in the patient mobile app.

Patient Starts the Encounter

Upon initiating a conversation on the SigmaMD patient mobile app, individuals are prompted to select either 'experiencing troubling symptoms' or 'general visit'. Should they opt for 'experiencing troubling symptoms', they are navigated to a screen where they can articulate their ailments using the Symptom Questionnaire. This intuitive questionnaire encourages patients to provide key details about their symptoms, such as their nature, onset, duration, and impact on daily activities, in a straightforward and user-friendly manner. Patients have the flexibility to input multiple symptoms, utilizing natural language to describe their conditions accurately.

Clinician Access to Patient Answers 

Once completed, the answers are displayed as the first message of a symptom-based chat. This helps the clinician get a clear picture of the patient's condition before start chatting, making communication better and helping the clinician understand the patient's situation before talking more or examining them.

Discovering Diagnostic Clues

The Symptom Questionnaire doesn't just help with communication. It also helps find clues for diagnosis. In the clinician’s Encounter Screen, there's a 'Possible Causes' feature that uses Natural Language Processing (NLP) technology to look through medical knowledge and suggest possible conditions and possible drugs related to the patient-reported symptoms. This list helps clinicians understand possible reasons behind the symptoms for reference. To view it, click on the clipboard button inside the chat.

Patient Safety Feature

The questionnaire also powers another feature that checks the symptoms. Depending on the severity of the symptoms, this feature may suggest the patient seek emergency help, showing the app's strong focus on patient safety.

The Symptom Questionnaire in SigmaMD is a big step forward in using digital tools to improve communication between patients and clinicians. Providing a structured and informed starting point, it opens the door to better digital healthcare solutions, showing the valuable role of technology in helping patient care and clinician insight.