Patient engagement and adherence applications
Patient engagement and adherence has long been seen as the ‘last mile’ problem of healthcare – the final barrier between ineffective and good health outcomes. The more patients proactively participate in their own well-being and care, the better the outcomes – utilisation, financial outcomes and member experience. These factors are increasingly being addressed by big data and AI.
Providers and hospitals often use their clinical expertise to develop a plan of care that they know will improve a chronic or acute patient’s health. However, that often doesn’t matter if the patient fails to make the behavioural adjustment necessary, eg losing weight, scheduling a follow-up visit, filling prescriptions or complying with a treatment plan. Noncompliance – when a patient does not follow a course of treatment or take the prescribed drugs as recommended – is a major problem.
In a survey of more than 300 clinical leaders and healthcare executives, more than 70% of the respondents reported having less than 50% of their patients highly engaged and 42% of respondents said less than 25% of their patients were highly engaged.
If deeper involvement by patients results in better health outcomes, can AI-based capabilities be effective in personalising and contextualising care? There is growing emphasis on using machine learning and business rules engines to drive nuanced interventions along the care continuum. Messaging alerts and relevant, targeted content that provoke actions at moments that matter is a promising field in research.
Another growing focus in healthcare is on effectively designing the ‘choice architecture’ to nudge patient behaviour in a more anticipatory way based on real-world evidence. Through information provided by provider EHR systems, biosensors, watches, smartphones, conversational interfaces and other instrumentation, software can tailor recommendations by comparing patient data to other effective treatment pathways for similar cohorts. The recommendations can be provided to providers, patients, nurses, call-centre agents or care delivery coordinators.