Understanding Complexity of Chronic Non-Communicable Diseases: An Integrated Approach for Personalized Management of Patients with COPD - Abstract
Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) will increase over the next decades. Understanding the complexity of chronic NCDs and the adaptation of the health care system to implement new management strategies addressing the patients’ needs, are still major challenges. Despite all the efforts aligning healthcare delivery with their needs, patients with chronic NCDs are still confronted with fragmented, complex healthcare systems. Healthcare management of NCDs needs a better understanding of the complexity of the disease in order to offer and organize more effective therapies to reduce the huge societal and economic burden of these diseases. In this paper, a patient-centered, personalized healthcare organizational structure for COPD patients with a high disease burden is presented. This could serve as a model for the management of chronic and complex NCDs in general.