Patient Engagement Starts with Care, Not Just Data Sharing

How can healthcare providers effectively engage patients in the entire treatment process without excessively consuming their time?

At times, we tend to distinguish patients’ behavioral patterns from general human behavior, analyzing them separately. However, like everyone else, patients require motivation. Whether driven by internal factors, external factors, or both, individuals need motivation to take action or complete a task. This is a fundamental psychological need for humans and a key mechanism through which they enter a state of arousal.

However, both in the United States and abroad, many people pay little attention to their own health. Indeed, there is no need to make a fuss about this. Generally, people do not concern themselves with their health until absolutely necessary. Take obesity as an example. According to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the number of individuals with obesity in the United States has increased dramatically over the past few decades. In 1997, 19.4% of the U.S. population had obesity; by 2010, this figure had surged to 35.7%. The rising trend in obesity prevalence is striking and cause for concern. Moreover, if current trends continue, it is projected that more than half of Americans will have obesity by 2030. This implies that the majority of the population will suffer from other chronic diseases at that time.

Currently, the U.S. healthcare system is overwhelmed by the burden of chronic disease patients. By 2030, as the number of individuals with obesity rises, the prevalence of diabetes, heart disease, stroke, hypertension, and obesity-related cancers is also projected to double.

Although individual healthcare providers have prescribed a solution to this problem by advising patients to increase physical activity and pay attention to their diet, the issue remains unresolved, with patients continuing to suffer from pain and illness. Sometimes, it takes experiencing certain events—such as being diagnosed with diabetes, suffering a stroke, or having a heart attack—for individuals to truly prioritize their health. Methods must be found to prevent this from happening.

It is difficult to achieve optimal treatment outcomes when patients are not actively engaged. Healthcare providers must rely on patient-reported data and hope that patients take responsibility for developing their own health maintenance plans. The responsibilities of the two parties are incompatible, and collaboration is not required to achieve the goals.

This division of labor has placed the healthcare industry in a dilemma, forcing it to strive for solutions to two critical challenges: how to incentivize patients to take greater ownership of their health, and how to facilitate their effective engagement in the entire treatment process without imposing excessive time burdens.

The answer to these questions is technology.

As consumers, we use technology every day to improve our lives. For instance, when deciding on a route for travel, we consult Google Maps by providing our current location, and it returns several safe and efficient route options. When we are curious about local culinary offerings, we turn to Yelp, input our location, and receive relevant information, which then helps us decide to try the nearest Mexican restaurant.

Why not extend this experience of seeking advice through consultations to the field of healthcare? An increasing number of tools are now available to help patients better achieve self-management, improve tracking by healthcare providers, enhance psychological and behavioral intervention models for patients, and strengthen communication between both parties.

In fact, patients can use a wide variety of apps to monitor their diet, physical activity, and weight—all designed to improve their health outcomes. Although these tools hold significant potential, they are not ready-made solutions for addressing patient engagement issues. To make wearable devices and other health apps more useful, information sharing must become an integral part of the entire care continuum.

When physicians have access to these data, they can provide patients with additional contextual information and implement a range of behavioral and psychological interventions to help improve their health outcomes. As professional healthcare providers obtain actionable data, they can deliver feedback to patients based on real-time information, conveyed in a manner that is easily understandable to the patients.

Therefore, patients undergoing treatment will continuously enhance their understanding of their own health status, thereby prompting them to take action. This growing awareness also serves as a continuous source of motivation for patients, which is crucial. More precisely, patients evolve from merely being concerned to actively communicating with their physicians, from seeking consultations to engaging in ongoing participation, ultimately becoming true partners in the therapeutic process aimed at helping them achieve the best possible health outcome attainable.

The healthcare services industry has reached a critical crossroads. The data cited above—half of the total population is suffering from at least one chronic disease—reflects our reality. Current trends in patient engagement are moving in the right direction: we have digital health technologies, patients are increasingly using these technologies to monitor their own health, and healthcare providers are demonstrating a willingness to adopt them.

Undoubtedly, technology can serve as an accelerator for advancing patient engagement, but please remember that all of this begins with sharing and caring.

About Chris Edwards
Chris is the Chief Marketing Officer at Validic, an industry-leading health information integration platform. The company’s business involves connecting data collected from clinical medical devices, wearable health devices, sensors, and applications. Its clients include hospitals, private payers, pharmaceutical companies, healthcare organizations, and health information firms. Chris has over 20 years of experience in global market management and planning for healthcare technology companies operating under both B2B and B2C e-commerce models. He is passionate about bringing “health” back into “healthcare.” For more information, follow him on Twitter @chrissedwards.

Compiled by Zi Junwei | Edited by Mo Renying