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The following is an exclusive guest contributed post by Nirav Desai, Principal Healthcare Strategist at Mobiquity.
We are at an incredibly exciting time in healthcare, with both the pace of innovation and the rate at which we are making progress in treatments and cures happening faster than ever before. But all that progress and innovation doesn’t mean we have solved every challenge. For example, non-adherence to medication is estimated to cost over $200B in unnecessary medical care in the US alone. Worse yet, it results in 125,000 deaths per year, which if it was counted, would make it the sixth-leading cause of death in the U.S. Stats like this are alarming in the aggregate, and yet we have to understand that behind every diagnosis or death is a unique individual with his/her own specific set of challenges when it comes to adhering to their prescribed care plan.
Therefore, as we seek to create solutions that improve outcomes, it’s important to take into account the patient – and the ways we can empower each and every one to overcome their adherence challenges. One of the best ways to do this is through mobile. Why? Well, because people have already adopted the technology ubiquitously; it’s always on and immediately available for communications and data capture; and, it is personalizable to an individual’s preferences.
But when it comes to leveraging mobile technology to better connect with patients, drive desirable results, and ultimately create a better competitive advantage, the answer is as simple as downloading an app—and as complex as human behavior.
No two patients are the same
Just like traditional medical prescriptions, everyone cannot – and should not – be treated the same when it comes to driving (or changing) behavior. The great thing about mobile devices is that each one has a wide portfolio of technologies inside —clock, GPS, camera, etc. — that can illuminate an individual’s context such as time, location and social interests. And they can connect to all types of wearable devices (like FitBit and Jawbone) which provide a wealth of information themselves. All of this, then, is encapsulated within one device — collected, stored and shared with a health provider, care team, family or social network.
The value of this context-awareness is that it enables the deployment of different types of motivational drivers to help people take better care of their own health, be it any number of healthy behaviors – from remembering to take a pill to losing weight. The right motivational strategy varies per person. For one, it may be an educational reminder. For another, it might be a leaderboard competition. For still another, it could be access to a social network for encouragement. Whether it’s a companion app for a therapeutic drug, a solution for medication adherence, improving diet and exercise or controlling alcohol and cigarette use – for patients to be more empowered in their healthcare, they need to be engaged on a behavioral level.
Capturing deeper analytics / driving targeted interactions
The pathway to patient engagement and behavior change is through data, as it can provide the contextual insights that determine the best way to target users based on behavior.
Take, for example, a person who is impacted by the weather – either in terms of how well he/she feels to go out or how well he/she can drive to get prescribed medication. An intelligent interaction might tell that patient to pick up that medication a few days early, rather than be impacted by the poor weather that’s expected a few days from now. Even better, the interaction could be automated, and the patient’s local pharmacy could use the weather data and individual’s weather-driven behavior to deliver the medication directly to them. The convenience and benefits of that experience would be more likely to increase that individual’s willingness to continue sharing their medication, location and schedule data so that these benefits remain.
Another example would be to have a diabetic patient wear sensors which can read glucose levels, blood pressure, etc. That data could be automatically shared with family members and caregivers so that they can keep an eye on the patient’s condition. If certain metrics go out of range, this could trigger a recommendation that the caregiver contact the patient and use the date to engage the patient in a “teaching moment” about how their non-adherence is impacting their health. These well-timed digital-data-driven interactions can be very powerful in nudging people towards healthier behaviors.
With all the technology available to patients, caregivers, healthcare providers and all the touchpoints along the way (e.g., pharmacies) today, the path to improved care is clear – and mobile is a key enabler. Behavior change, even with the ultimate goal being better health, is never easy, and takes many different elements coming together to drive the effort. There is no better tool to serve as the launch pad for behavior change, as nothing else comes close to mobile’s unique ability to deliver engagement through personalization.