patient engagement Articles / Blogs / Perficient https://blogs.perficient.com/tag/patient-engagement/ Expert Digital Insights Wed, 01 May 2024 15:30:58 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://blogs.perficient.com/files/favicon-194x194-1-150x150.png patient engagement Articles / Blogs / Perficient https://blogs.perficient.com/tag/patient-engagement/ 32 32 30508587 [Podcast] What if You Could Be as Customer Obsessed as a Retailer? An Interview With James Hannis https://blogs.perficient.com/2024/05/01/healthcare-innovation-james-hannis/ https://blogs.perficient.com/2024/05/01/healthcare-innovation-james-hannis/#respond Wed, 01 May 2024 15:30:58 +0000 https://blogs.perficient.com/?p=362302

As healthcare continues to evolve, it finds unexpected inspiration in other industries. In our latest podcast, James Hannis of Cardinal Health reveals how a retail perspective can revolutionize patient care in the digital age.

James has a rich background in retail and discusses how this experience is invaluable in his current role. He highlights the importance of speed – a cornerstone of retail – and how it can elevate the patient experience in healthcare. From navigating complex persona-based marketing to ensuring rapid service delivery, James unpacks the potential of a retail mindset to make healthcare more responsive and personal.

This episode also touches on the nuances of personalization within the privacy constraints of the healthcare industry and the digital hurdles that come with a traditional, B2B-focused business.

Connect with James Hannis, Chief Architect – Customer Engagement and Enterprise Solutions

Connect with Jim Hertzfeld, Vice President of Strategy

Listen now on your favorite podcast platform or visit our website.

 

Subscribe Where You Listen

Apple | Spotify | Amazon | Google | Stitcher

Meet our Guest

James Hannis, Cardinal Health

James Hannis, Chief Architect – Customer Engagement and Enterprise Solutions

James Hannis, the chief architect at Cardinal Health since 2015, is a visionary IT executive known for his work in multi-channel retailing. With a rich background from Comdata, Ascena Retail Group, and Express, he has a track record of driving innovation and building high-performing tech teams. At Cardinal Health he has been instrumental in making healthcare solutions more accessible and personalized, leading customer engagement and corporate solutions, and navigating the evolving healthcare landscape. His dynamic leadership and dedication to people development have propelled the company into a new era of technology capability.

Connect with James

 

Meet the Host

Jim Hertzfeld

Jim Hertzfeld is Area Vice President, Strategy for Perficient. For over two decades, he has worked with clients to convert market insights into real-world digital products and customer experiences that actually grow their business.

More than just a strategist, Jim is a pragmatic rebel known for challenging the conventional and turning grand visions into actionable steps. His candid demeanor, sprinkled with a dose of cynical optimism, shapes a narrative that challenges and inspires listeners.

Connect with Jim:

LinkedIn | Perficient

 

 

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Creating Optimized and Engaging Provider Profiles For Your Hospital Website https://blogs.perficient.com/2022/04/12/creating-optimized-and-engaging-provider-profiles-for-your-hospital-website/ https://blogs.perficient.com/2022/04/12/creating-optimized-and-engaging-provider-profiles-for-your-hospital-website/#respond Tue, 12 Apr 2022 13:00:29 +0000 https://blogs.perficient.com/?p=307703

If you work with a hospital or health system, the most important section of your website is likely the provider directory. In fact, in an unofficial ranking of 50 of Perficient’s recent hospital website implementations, we found that, aside from the homepage, the provider directory is the most visited section and one of the most influential for driving new patient acquisition.

So how can you make sure your providers are providing a meaningful and engaging experience before a patient even steps into an office? Below, we’ll discuss tips to create an experience that drive conversions…and connections.

Who’s making decisions in provider searches?

When we’re shopping for something new, be it a new car or a new healthcare provider, we’re engaging both sides of our brain. What we colloquially call “right-brain” and “left-brain” functions work together to process information, make decisions, and create connections.

In short, the left brain is the more analytical half, dealing in logic, language, and recognition of numbers; the right is the creative counterpart, specializing in emotion, imagination, and intuition. Together, they make a great team. And when we think about what patients are doing when they are looking for a new healthcare provider, we can see both side of the brain step up.

Let’s think about what patients are really looking for when they click on a provider profile. Often, they are interested in:

  • Learning about the provider’s education and experience (left-brain)
  • Learning about them as a person, and seeing if they can feel a connection (right-brain)
  • Understanding where the provider is located and how easy it will be to get an appointment (left-brain)
  • Trying to get a feel for what kind of experience they will have as a patient (right-brain)

That’s quite a mix of left- and right-brain action, so it’s essential to feed both sides of the brain when creating a profile that will speak to patients in a holistic way.

Create a balanced provider profile

While we are barely scratching the surface of brain science here, this is enough to tell us that we need to balance some logical proof points with a good dose of empathy when crafting provider profiles.

For example, we can support the left-brain processes with:

  • Quick facts (e.g., locations, specialties, hours, years of service)
  • Educational profile
  • Insurances accepted
  • Research and papers contributed
  • Ratings (in fact, a recent survey reported that 90% of patients report using online reviews to aid in their provider search)

​For right-brain processes, we can include:

  • Quote or story (for example, ”why I got into medicine” or ”my philosophy on patient care”)
  • First-person biography
  • Photo (bonus points for short videos to help patients hear first-hand from their new provider)
  • Hobbies or family life outside of the office
  • Linking to blog posts or articles by the provider can also help the patient to hear the voice of the provider before they’ve even met

Together, these types of content give patients a fuller picture of the provider and can go a long way in helping them to decide to make that appointment.

Help users take the next step after a provider search

Now that you’ve got their attention, make it easy for patients to take the next step and set up an appointment.

  • Include self-service capabilities like online appointment scheduling to capitalize on the interest built by the profile.
  • When online scheduling isn’t available, using a ”Request an appointment” form is a great alternative, especially for busy patients who may put off making a call.
  • Next-available-appointment widgets are also helpful for patients to see when they can get in to see their new provider.
  • Linking to forms or information that helps patients prepare for the appointment is also helpful in capitalizing on the momentum you’ve built — and will make for an easier check-in experience when the appointment rolls around.

Provider profiles are the first impression – make them count!

Finding a new provider can be a challenging enterprise, and patients don’t know how well their research paid off until they meet the provider face to face, but a well-crafted provider profile can take much of that guesswork away. By speaking to the logical and emotional sides of your patient’s decision-making, you can help providers start to forge a strong connection in a virtual way.

Our Digital Healthcare Strategy team helps healthcare and life sciences organizations better understand their audiences and create memorable digital experiences. Contact us today for more information.

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Recapping Our “Modernizing Patient Engagement” Roundtable Discussion https://blogs.perficient.com/2022/04/06/recapping-our-modernizing-patient-engagement-round-table/ https://blogs.perficient.com/2022/04/06/recapping-our-modernizing-patient-engagement-round-table/#respond Wed, 06 Apr 2022 16:50:25 +0000 https://blogs.perficient.com/?p=306527

Perficient and IBM recently partnered with BWG Connect to conduct a survey of 100+ healthcare professionals exploring technology adoption in the post-pandemic environment. Experts from these organizations joined a roundtable discussion to review what is top of mind for healthcare organizations in 2022 based on the responses to this study.

The panel was moderated by Aaron Conant, co-founder and managing director of BWG Connect, and a panel of experts that included:

A Focus on Equity in Healthcare

Fowkes shared that in a study IBM conducted with 39 Blue Cross Blue Shields, equitable distribution of health was top of mind in every single organization. Similarly, participants in the BWG survey frequently brought health equity into their answers. Our panelists took some time addressing concerns around the use of automation furthering this issue:

Brendan Fowkes: The respondents very quickly jumped into a discussion of health equity, equitable distribution of health care, and where the social determinants fit in. What did we see over the past 18 months? Our most vulnerable took the worst beating.

Tom Lennon: As we start to push into AI and leverage AI, just because you’re using information around social determinants, it doesn’t mean that you’re going to drive equity. This is because the bias is inherent within AI until you can manage it and normalize. That bias is still going to be there. Learning how to use that and adapt it is important because that gives us the opportunity to help address some inequality. There’s also the opportunity that it could make it worse because AI doesn’t have the same feeling and natural intelligence as we would have when we’re worried about different groups within our population.

Eric Walk: Yeah, that’s where it’s really important to think about the tools you’re picking. Some AI tools have capabilities that help you identify bias in your models and others don’t. Those priorities are critical as you’re looking at the tools you’re using and the way you’re designing your models and thinking about building models. Another critical priority is educating your data scientists as you’re training your people. People build the models. People build the algorithms. People train the algorithms. It’s critical to train those people to think about these things and to be concerned about them and look out for the warning signs that there’s an issue in a model that’s exacerbating historical inequality.

EXPLORE NOW: Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DE&I) in Healthcare

Other Key Takeaways from the Research Study

The survey generated interesting data points around data privacy, communicating ROI, and gradual technology adoption, which the panelists also explored:

Privacy, Compliance, and Trustworthy AI 

The research study revealed that many healthcare professionals had questions and concerns about the safeguarding of protected health information (PHI). The moderator opened this discussion with a question to the other panelists about protecting sensitive data when using automation.

BF: We use the term “trustworthy AI” because, if there’s any violation of a patient’s trust, you’ve lost everybody, whether it’s the nurses, the call center agents, or the patients themselves. We start with that foundation and a core belief that everything has to be trustworthy from the start. There’s no hidden “whatever else.” You’re not borrowing the data to go do something else.

If you start with that foundation at your core belief, you can start to overcome any of these objections. You’re going to design a system with the proper security, privacy, and consent. Borrowing a little bit of what we’ve done on the academic side, you can use other examples to make sure that everything’s secure when you’re designing that trustworthy story.

EW: And how are you going to control the data? There are CRM options out there that have the proper certification security controls in place to allow you to load your PHI and secure it and control it appropriately. Even so, that may not be an option for any given organization. How can we take the AI and the machine learning models, and bring them to where the data is, so we have fewer concerns about shipping the data to other places for training and for executing those models? We can more tightly control how that data is being sent, where it’s being sent, and how it’s being used.

You’re going to have more challenges in terms of just making sure you understand the way each of those solutions controls and secures PHI because a good number of them are compliant in various ways. Or you can look to other options that allow you to maintain trust through the whole chain of custody of the data by using more complex and nuanced solutions.  That allows you to take your modeling and do it where and when you need it.

TL: Yeah, that governance is important, especially as you put it where we’re sending that data. You must make sure that we’re able to limit the exposure in one place and send the information so it doesn’t have exposure all over the place. Trying to manage that when it gets throughout your entire organization can be quite tricky.

READ NOW: HIPAA Compliance and Protecting PHI

Communicating ROI When Consolidating to One CRM 

The panelists anticipate that the 81% of survey participants who see the value in consolidating to one CRM may have trouble calculating quantifiable value in doing so. They then discussed several ways that this 81% can effectively communicate ROI.

EW: There’s an opportunity to save some money and optimize your operations. But it is a question of how realistic it is and how much you’re going to spend to get there. So, I think that it can feel like the ROI is too far away. But there are some interesting opportunities that come from replacing the black box technology that comes with some of the less fully functional and less fully capable, but industry-specific platforms, and looking at the more enterprise full-spectrum platforms. So, it’s going to be an interesting journey as folks go down that way.

BF: And there’s definitely value there. But it’s hard to quantify, as Eric was just saying. So, to the 81% that see value in it, our advice is understand articulating your savings by retiring legacy applications, like some of these more black boxed pre-configured things that lack flexibility, as Eric was describing. What are you paying a year in applications like those? That’ll be an easy way to get to an ROI.

What does success look like when you’re having these conversations? Having a definable metric, and if we’re doing call centers, there’s metrics there that are pretty easily and widely accepted: cost per call, number of calls, deflection, and average handle time. You can put some hard ROI around that. But other ones are sometimes a little harder.

Our recommendation and our experience is let’s agree what success looks like before you define the use case you want to chase. Our recommendation is to find what the outcome is you want to measure, because you can’t fix what you can’t measure. So, we need to measure to prove it worked and then that success will build on itself.

LEARN MORE: Driving Increased ROI with CRM 

A Crawl-Walk-Run Approach to Technology Adoption 

Many see adopting this technology as a daunting task and a huge undertaking. The round table moderator addressed this by asking the other panelists how they are breaking down the process for clients who don’t think they have the bandwidth to begin any work with machine learning.

EW: You can do this use case-by-use case. You can tackle one challenge in one area with this kind of technology and slowly expand it. The upfront cost of dealing with security concerns and ethical concerns is lower than you might expect. If your use case is sufficiently simple, dealing with the additional concerns of more complicated use cases becomes incremental cost. The overhead there is not going to be huge and it’s not going to sink your plan to expand out into other areas.

BF: I call it “crawl-walk-run;” other people use “land-and-expand” or “start small.” Whatever metaphor you want to use, there’s a way to take something simple. An example was middle-aged men not taking blood pressure medication. If you looked at socioeconomic factors in that model, and we predicted not adherence, it would ship them a three-month supply and give them a call to tell them it’s coming. It’s not a complex prediction. It didn’t take a lot of work. What’s the generic cost, about 30 dollars to keep somebody adhering?

There still is true machine learning in the model. We did a whole scatter plot where we can look at all these different techniques and pick the right model that was most accurate. But it wasn’t a complex use case. It was just a different way of using the data they had and then helping them automate something to drive a benefit at the same time. So, it is all about crawl-walk-run.

EXPLORE NOW: The Healthcare Executive’s Guide to Intelligent Automation

See More!

This research study revealed key insights on the adoption of automation technology in the medical industry. Our panelists discussed how your organization can take advantage of these technological improvements by gradually adopting, communicating clear goals, and remaining compliant. Learn more about what industry professionals are prioritizing in 2022 by exploring the published research study and watching the full on-demand recording.

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Life Sciences Companies Can Establish Better Relationships https://blogs.perficient.com/2019/10/08/life-sciences-companies-can-establish-better-relationships/ https://blogs.perficient.com/2019/10/08/life-sciences-companies-can-establish-better-relationships/#respond Tue, 08 Oct 2019 13:01:06 +0000 https://blogs.perficient.com/?p=242693

It used to be that a doctor was a patient’s only touch point for a diagnosis and prescription. Today, patients have many more avenues to get the information they seek, which has led to higher expectations from patients. Fortunately, life sciences companies have the opportunity to understand, educate, and treat patients by successfully engaging them.

Shifts in Healthcare That Changed Patient Expectations

Patients are more empowered than ever to take control of their health and health data. There is a plethora of information related to health conditions and how to manage them, what treatment options patients have, and any potential risks and side effects. Better-informed patients are empowered to guide the decisions concerning their health in a direct way. And because of the way this information is gathered, patients have become advocates for their own health.

life sciences

There has been a dramatic shift in patient expectations from pharmaceutical and medical device companies. Where historically the doctor was the primary point of contact for patients, healthcare consumers are now looking directly to companies for information and value-add services above and beyond treatments to manage their health. Patients expect personalized advice, support, and tools that were previously only provided by their physicians.

These shifts in healthcare have created a very unique opportunity for life sciences companies to develop a direct relationship with patients. Companies that recognize this and put a strategy in place are going to be successful in establishing loyal patient relationships.

What Patient Engagement is Not

To make sense of this shift, it’s necessary to understand what patient engagement really means. Some companies have tried to benefit from this shift and embarked on patient engagement initiatives but have not been entirely successful. To understand why they may not have been successful we must first explore what patient engagement is not.

  • Mobile apps: A mobile app by itself doesn’t equate to patient engagement. There needs to be an entire strategy for mobile that needs to be understood first before you attempt to build an app for your patients.
  • Patient portal: Many companies build patient portals, only to have them sit idle with no patient traffic. The “if you build it, they will come” strategy doesn’t work in most cases.
  • Social media: Social media can certainly be part of a patient engagement strategy, but it is not as simple as just having a Facebook page or a Twitter account.
  • Unique marketing campaigns: What most marketing companies or departments fail to understand is that this is not simply a marketing problem that can be solved with a hip marketing campaign to address the overall objective.

While each of these can be, and usually are, part of a larger strategy around patient engagement, each of these in and of itself is not what patient engagement is all about. A company cannot simply just adopt more modern tools as a solution.

To learn more about the relationship between life sciences companies and patients, the shifts in healthcare that are changing how organizations are engaging with patients, and how to approach the development of a patient engagement initiative; you can click here or download our guide below.

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Why Savvy Healthcare Marketers Are Using Dynamics 365 https://blogs.perficient.com/2019/04/29/why-savvy-healthcare-marketers-are-using-dynamics-365/ https://blogs.perficient.com/2019/04/29/why-savvy-healthcare-marketers-are-using-dynamics-365/#respond Mon, 29 Apr 2019 17:04:51 +0000 https://blogs.perficient.com/?p=238878

Implementation of keen healthcare marketing strategies require the right tools. Healthcare organizations face mounting competition for patient loyalty, must continuously find ways to set themselves apart while enhancing engagement and delivering impactful outreach programs. Further complicating matters, consumers today expect you to know them and offer personalized communications and to deliver the right message, in the right place, at the right time (patient personalization).

Personalized messages have 46% higher open rates and 112% higher click-through rates than “business as usual” marketing messages. Active Trail

 

And not surprisingly, there has been an explosion of consumer relationship management (CRM) technology in the healthcare industry. Today’s savvy healthcare marketers are leveraging integrated marketing automation and CRM systems to deliver a superior consumer experience – and they are implementing Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Marketing.

The global healthcare CRM market is expected to reach $28.89 billion by 2026. Statistics Market Research Consulting

 

Here’s why: Microsoft Dynamics 365 weaves together data and relationship building to deliver intelligent patient engagement and communications – that are proactive, predictive and personal. It allows healthcare marketers to elevate brand presence, personalize outreach communications, as well as to track and analyze engagement.

Dynamics 365 enables Hospital Marketers to:

  • Efficiently create graphical email messages and online content
  • Design interactive consumer journeys to nurture patients with personalized experiences
  • Organize and publicize events by keeping all event information in one place
  • Analyze campaign data and insights to improve future interactions and communications

… and more.

Learn six tips for using Microsoft Dynamics 365 with our new guide Engaging Healthcare Consumers with Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Marketing.

 

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Gartner ITxpo: Wave Three of Healthcare Consumer Engagement https://blogs.perficient.com/2018/10/14/gartner-it-expo-wave-three-of-healthcare-consumer-engagement/ https://blogs.perficient.com/2018/10/14/gartner-it-expo-wave-three-of-healthcare-consumer-engagement/#respond Sun, 14 Oct 2018 18:32:22 +0000 https://blogs.perficient.com/?p=232435

At Gartner IT Expo, Jeff Cribbs, VP, Analyst, Gartner, gave a session on the third wave of healthcare consumer engagement.

Harness a new wave of practices and technology to deliver consumer engagement for your healthcare organization: Consumer access and control of health data will fundamentally change the health data economy. In wave three, digital becomes more digital (automation), and humans become more human (conversational interfaces). Use this vision to plan your engagement strategy.

As you add complexity, it becomes more difficult to “juggle” it.  Like juggling, these problems become impossible due to human constraints.

Consumer Engagement feels different from other aspects of healthcare.

There are three different modes in which consumers engage with healthcare today (thing juggling three balls today.

The Generations Model

Generation 1: Wake up, patch up, catch up.

  • It started with insurers becoming aware of the need to improve customer engagement. In other words, they were aware.
  • It continues with starting to patch your various processes and systems.
  • You finalize this generation by hiring the right team and roles who then get the organization moving int he right direction.

 

Generation 2: Allow your organization to act as one

This means that across all functions, the organization coordinates the experience. This is regardless of the channel or the department.  That’s the aspiration

  • Analytics need to orchestrate these activities.

Think about what digital chronic condition management tools like Virta, Propeller, Joyable, and Omada.  These companies help create a coordinated experience.  Of course, each of these firms looks at a single condition and not at the person level who may have more than one condition.

The next generation here will take a “concierge” approach

Generation 3: Ecosystems act as one

  • Disparate organizations act as one across the life and across systems
  • Example: Amazon echo hears a kid coughing in the night and a parent hears it in another room.
    • But Echo has a skill by the minute clinic which has a connection to Amazon Key which delivers the right medicine to your door in the morning.
  • Example: Kids are most infectious when they are pre-symptomatic
    • What if Echo could understand the cough and what that means like strep, allergy, etc.

Technology required for the generations model

Gen 1:

Consumer: Online education and advice

Healthcare enterprise: Channels and tactical CRM

Gen 2:

Consumer:

Healthcare Enterprise: Consumer Engagement hub. this is integration with key systems, operational CRM, and Analytical CRM.

 

Gen 3

Consumer: Apple Health and their various kits. Also think of new thinking and regulation on the rights of patients.

Key challenge: What is the busienss model to enable all this record sharing and new apps from it?

Mass Personalization Platform: This is mass personalization across providers, education, justice, payers, housing, etc.   This is a massive challenge with the need for data and process inter-operability.

How to Make Use of These

Recommendation 1: Evaluate the business case for advancing your organization through generations.

Recommendation 2: Use the generations model as a first level sort. It helps to take so many ideas and put it in some logical form. Healthcare portal plays an important role in gen 1 while blockchain is definitely a gen 3 activity.

Recommendation 3: Learn to read the signs and wonders of the next generation.  It helps you to evaluate your technology readiness. When are you ready to use this tool and when is this tool sufficiently mature.

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Driving Patient Engagement at Dignity Health with Sitecore https://blogs.perficient.com/2018/10/08/dignity-health-drives-patient-engagement-digital-health-strategies/ https://blogs.perficient.com/2018/10/08/dignity-health-drives-patient-engagement-digital-health-strategies/#respond Mon, 08 Oct 2018 16:49:56 +0000 https://blogs.perficient.com/?p=232167

It is exciting to see the breadth and depth of Perficient’s Digital Health capabilities making a difference in the market with Dignity Health and Sitecore. We all know that creating and delivering excellent end-to-end web experiences for patients is a key goal for healthcare, but you only have a shot of getting there with an excellent end-to-end team.

Dignity Health’s leadership in driving better patient engagement is well-known, and it has long been a major point of emphasis and differentiation. It is this commitment to investing in Digital Health tools and solutions that make the process of healthcare so much more efficient and enjoyable for patients and families. Sitecore, in turn, has become a sought-after vendor in this space because of the flexibility and comprehensiveness of its web solution.

The Sitecore Experience Award being presented to Perficient Digital this week is a fantastic example of Perficient’s role as a partner in this journey toward end-to-end Digital Health for providers and payers alike.

At Perficient, we believe that Digital Health is all about this kind of broad, strategic thinking as technologies are deployed – avoiding siloed activity and emphasizing that health technology domains are highly interwoven with one another. In this case, the combination of vision, expertise, and skills among Dignity Health, Sitecore, and Perficient means the Sitecore web experience has an impact beyond engagement and into other Digital Health domains.

In helping drive more effective, frictionless engagement, it is also helping to make delivery of care more streamlined and, critically, contributing to the generation of meaningful operational insights that in turn help transform patient outcomes.

As Michael Seagraves, senior director of digital strategy and operations at Dignity Health puts it, we are “[enabling] patients to take ownership of their health journey, and increasing efficiencies for our physicians and our network.” Well said, and I think there is much more to come.

Looking forward to helping our Digital Health services go from strength to strength. See you in Boston at the Connected Health Conference.

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How the IoT will Impact Healthcare https://blogs.perficient.com/2018/09/12/how-iot-will-impact-healthcare/ https://blogs.perficient.com/2018/09/12/how-iot-will-impact-healthcare/#respond Wed, 12 Sep 2018 13:26:40 +0000 https://blogs.perficient.com/?p=230923

Let’s be honest, when it comes to our health we all want prompt and personal care. As a patient, we want the cost to be low, and the feeling of empowerment to be prevalent throughout the experience.

Our world is becoming increasingly connected through the development of technology. With these extensive levels of connectivity, the Internet of Things (IoT) is making a significant impact. Specifically, in the healthcare industry.

The connection of things is driving multiple trends and inspiring new practices and workflows featuring efficiency and more precise diagnostic recommendations.

Within healthcare, the IoT represents the frontier, the place where outer limits are being tested and tried in both facility management and patient care.

Let’s Discuss 3 Healthcare based IoT Trends

  • Refining patient experiences
  • Eliminating cost while focusing on services
  • Increased Interest Level of Patients with Meaningful and Timely Health Alerts

Refining Patient Experiences

It is not a secret that healthcare is switching from cost-based service to value-based service. When healthcare facilities implement value-based care programs fully, patients will experience better engagement with their care providers.

With the implementation of IoT patients have the ability to engage with applications and software to analyze their own health data. Smart devices and wearables will assist patients monitoring their process to make sure the effects are proper.

“For example, by using an app installed on their smartphone, patients can create their own optimal healing environment through individual control over their room temperature, lighting and window blinds rather than calling on nurses to perform these basic tasks. In turn, this frees nurses up to spend more time on clinical tasks that will improve patient care.”

– HFM Magazine

Eliminating Cost While Focusing on Services

Healthcare facilities are no stranger to saving money, because every industry is looking for new ways to do more with less. However, operating costs rise while budgets continue to decline. Therefore, healthcare is looking to find new and efficient ways to lower expenses while increasing exceptional patient services.

Moving forward, machine learning will become a primary focus of hospitals and care facilities. Machine learning implementations will begin to collect data on patients, and contribute them to physician’s diagnosis to ensure precision.

As data is collected through the network of things, the machine learning algorithms will analyze endless amounts of variables associated with certain diseases. This analytic data will further assist physicians with diagnosis and proper measures of procedure.

Increased Interest Level of Patients with Meaningful and Timely Health Alerts

 Wearables and smart devices dominate our daily lives. From Fitbits to Apple watches, we consistently monitor ourselves and optimize our health data.

In healthcare, plans and providers collect data in real-time by utilizing wearable and implantable devices to monitor patients. “Today, there are 3.7 million medical devices in use that are connected to and monitor various parts of the body to inform healthcare decisions,” according to Forbes.com.

The younger generations have known nothing but a connected world, and rapid accessibility to data. This generation will continue to demand a high level of interaction, better processes and secure interfaces to access their own data. All of which are great things for the healthcare field.

“IoT is all set to gain rapid growth in coming years, 20.8 billion connected things are expected to be in use by 2020 when we compare this with 5 billion connected things in 2015; it is obviously a massive growth,”

-Abhinav Shrivastava, Senior Manager of Emorphis Technologies.

As health and fitness apps get introduced into the world of IoT, the industry witnessed a dramatic increase in the population’s health awareness. This increase in awareness stimulates a more educated population that not only empowers the user to monitor their health closer; but also gives first hand data collections to primary physicians when connected properly.

The data, whether it relates to exercise, sleep, vitals, or other health patterns, can provide organizations with a tremendous amount of actionable data. This high level of monitoring is just the tip of the spear.

These real-time data collections can gain the attention of the primary caregiver when a noticeable issue arises. Thus, the care giver can then contact the individual and take the appropriate steps for correction. These real-time data points will help to predict and hopefully limit serious conditions.

What’s Next for IoT in the Healthcare Industry?

The relationship between the healthcare industry and the IoT is a favorable one. The relationship already has a solid footing, and even established a joint name; the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT). The IoMT promotes a connection between medical devices commonly used in healthcare practices and their applications.

The future is highlighted with the implementation of IoMT as individuals will start to see smart hospitals arise with the assistance of predictive medicine and smart wearables applications. The smart hospitals will streamline the customer experience to make the care process more efficient.

With the implementation of smart devices and wearables, doctors or physicians will be able to contact the patient in order to prevent serious issues or to simply remind them about upcoming visits.

According to MarketResearch.com, “The healthcare Internet of Things market is all set to hit $117 billion by 2020.” Currently, about 30% of healthcare is dedicated to portable health monitoring, electronic health record (EHR) keeping and pharmaceutical safeguards.

Other applications featuring the IoT in future healthcare procedures includes sleep monitoring, infant monitoring, brain sensors, and clinical-grade biometric sensors.

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Seamless Digital Experience to Drive Patient/Consumer Engagement https://blogs.perficient.com/2018/05/10/seamless-digital-experience-patient-consumer-engagement/ https://blogs.perficient.com/2018/05/10/seamless-digital-experience-patient-consumer-engagement/#respond Thu, 10 May 2018 19:12:34 +0000 https://blogs.perficient.com/?p=206314

As a healthcare provider, there are a number of discrete digital tools on your website that form part of the entire patient/consumer digital experience. Each digital interaction through tools, such as a find-a-doctor app, patient portal, online appointment scheduler, virtual visit, health library, and symptom advice/checker, are meant to give patients a great, serviceable experience. Unfortunately, more often than not, the experience is not seamless.

Offering a comprehensive, seamless experience across all tools and applications for your digital services can be challenging and daunting.

However, it is essential to provide a holistic digital user experience (UX) as patients and consumers have come to expect this from other industries. So, how can you support painless transitions across multiple discrete tools on your website in order to create a usable and highly satisfactory digital experience?

4 key steps to integrate across each of your digital tools and applications for a seamless digital experience:

  1. Incorporate your logo and insert your organization’s brand personality through tone of voice throughout the copy
  2. Be consistent with fonts and colors and other user interface elements
  3. Customize UX to have similar layouts across all tools for consistent, intuitive interactions
  4. Take this to the next level by integrating backend systems, so you can use data to personalize each tool and application to adjust to the user and deliver more relevant digital experiences

By creating a digital experience that unifies isolated sessions for each digital interaction across tools, applications and digital channels, you’re able to provide a seamless, cohesive consumer, member, and patient experience that will lead to increased interaction, engagement and satisfaction.

There are a number of steps you can take, with some being simpler than others.

What methods are you implementing to create a seamless, holistic digital user experience for your patients and consumers?

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Augmented Reality and Revolutionary Holograms in Healthcare https://blogs.perficient.com/2018/04/19/augmented-reality-holograms-healthcare/ https://blogs.perficient.com/2018/04/19/augmented-reality-holograms-healthcare/#respond Thu, 19 Apr 2018 18:09:00 +0000 https://blogs.perficient.com/healthcare/?p=11894

Increasing amounts of companies are tirelessly working on ways to capitalize on their use of virtual reality and its friend in technology, augmented reality. The current options are predominantly for entertainment purposes such as; designing advanced video games, 3-D movies, and more.

However, with multiple opportunities focusing around visual, augmented reality has the chance to truly transform the healthcare process forever.

Augmented reality has the capability to bring 3-D images to life with practical applications in healthcare. A state-of-the-art technology, that experts believe will cooperate perfectly with 3-D printing to enhance the provider’s application in healthcare and the patient’s experience overall.

Augmented reality is a virtual technology that will superimpose a computer-generated image of data on a user’s view of the real world, and thus will provide a composite view. With this view, a healthcare practitioner will have access to in-depth, detailed imaging to conduct the evaluation.

Data availability and information processing technologies are already on a cutting-edge level, the next step is to bring substantial, even life-saving information into the doctors’ field of vision.

How will augmented reality benefit healthcare?

  • Transparent view of patient’s internal anatomy
  • Able to convey patient specific information efficiently
  • Hands-free visual options with gesture technology
  • Visual patient education options

Augmented reality tools come in a variety of forms including; head-mounted displays, tablet-based displays, and projected-based devices. Currently, the most common form is the head-mounted display that allows a healthcare practitioner to see directly what they are positioned to see and focus on the exact area they desire.

With multi levels of visual from exterior to interior, augmented reality has the possibly to truly revolutionize healthcare forever.

Whether the practitioner is advising a patient on the pros and cons of a disease treatment, or a surgeon is using the visual tool to understand a patient’s interior during a procedure; the virtual reality imagery will provide healthcare organizations new abilities to treat patients even more successfully.

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Patient Experience Must Become the Top Priority For Providers https://blogs.perficient.com/2018/04/12/patient-experience-priority-healthcare/ https://blogs.perficient.com/2018/04/12/patient-experience-priority-healthcare/#respond Thu, 12 Apr 2018 18:19:45 +0000 https://blogs.perficient.com/healthcare/?p=11896

Is healthcare shifting its focus to the patient and making emotional experience a priority?

What to know

Healthcare practitioners are developing two contradictory goals; improve the health of the population, while reducing costs. Organizations are presently struggling to remain above the profit margin because the healthcare system was designed and developed to increase revenue by increasing procedure volumes. Which is the opposite of effectiveness.

Additionally, the third piece of the Triple Aim is improving the patient experience and has become a primary focus for leading healthcare organizations.

Solutions For A Better Patient Experience

Happy patients result in more efficient workflow and a better medical outcome. Managing a cost curve while becoming a well-organized unit, maintains a patient-friendly environment. If a patient is relaxed, the individual is prone to remain still during appointments and procedures.

The value of communication, while frequent and consistent, cannot be overstated. This is relevant because a patient requires constant information and communication while conducting a medical journey. Receiving attention and treatment for conditions isn’t a little part of the process, but rather a key portion of the journey.

Maintaining a high level of informing the patient, is a task that all medical and healthcare facilities should master.

Primarily, the patient experience hinders on a certain degree of trust. Not many individuals are educated in the healthcare field, so therefore, it’s quite simple for an individual to get lost in the realm of information found online. With an easy aspect of trust, a potential patient can rely solely on the information they find and reduce anxiety about the care they will receive, and ultimately feel confident in becoming a future patient of a particular organization.

Overall, to improve the patient experience, organizations should begin to reshape their views and approaches. Starting to engage with the potential patient at the research stage all the way to the face-to-face visit, and beyond, will help ensure the patient is treated with care and compassion throughout their journey.

An organization that can build and strengthen a bond between the healthcare facility and the patient will develop a lasting relationship for years to come.

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How to Improve Patient Interactions with Web Analytics https://blogs.perficient.com/2018/04/06/patient-interactions-web-analytics/ https://blogs.perficient.com/2018/04/06/patient-interactions-web-analytics/#respond Fri, 06 Apr 2018 17:26:15 +0000 https://blogs.perficient.com/healthcare/?p=11889

Monitoring website traffic and evaluating its performance are the first steps in web analytics for your provider site. Analyzing web data to identify ways to better engage patients-consumers across the site is fundamental. Optimizing key visitor task conversion funnels and working towards improving the overall health of your site are just a few ideas to keep in mind.

Here are some questions you should be asking on a regular basis about analytics:

What does a spike in traffic truly mean? Is this qualified traffic?

When spikes in traffic are discovered, it’s important to understand where your site traffic is coming from and what this means for your site. Consider looking at a breakdown of website traffic by key metrics such as page views, session time, visitors, conversion events (schedule an appointment, find a doctor, find a location etc.) and conversion rates. When you understand where spikes are coming from and how qualified the traffic is, this will assist you in identifying whether the additional visits are likely to turn into new patients.

How are patients and potential consumers engaging with your site?

In addition to monitoring performance of key lead generation/conversion tasks, it’s worth taking a deeper look at engagement. These insights will help you identify how many pages are visited per session, time on site/time on page, repeat visitors, and exchanging of information to name a few. This will help paint a picture of what your website visitors are doing and support you in understanding your audience when making changes to the site and assisting with optimization efforts.

Do you evaluate performance by clinical area for the services provided?

Exploring traffic by different segments such as by clinical area (Heart, Cancer, Orthopedics etc.) across your provider site will provide a comprehensive view into specific patient-consumer digital interactions. Understanding conversion and direction such as drop off points within the funnel (for schedule an appointment, setting up a patient portal account, find a doctor, send a message to name a few), will support you in identifying areas for improvement for specific pages on the site.

Using web analytics data that also includes web session playbacks, online survey data, and heat maps helps to provide a comprehensive view of what is happening across your provider site. With deeper understanding of patient-consumer behavior, you’ll be able to drive recommendations, test hypothesis and optimize conversion funnels across your provider site to ensure you meet patient-consumer needs across your site. By no means is this an easy task.

I would love to hear how you are using web analytics to improve patient-consumer interactions. Please comment below.

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