Over the last few years, many vendors have rolled out products designed to engage patients further in their care. According to a new study, these solutions may be just the tip of the iceberg. In fact, many healthcare executives see patient-facing, engagement-enhancing technology as critical to the future of healthcare, according to a new study.
The study, by the World Business Group, focuses on technology that can link patients with care in between visits to their primary care center. Patient engagement technologies, which they call “automated care,” have the potential to bridge such gaps by providing AI-based assistance to consumers.
The survey, which was also backed by Conversa Health, drew on direct interviews and survey responses from 134 health execs. The researchers looked at how those execs viewed automated healthcare technologies, how these technologies might be used and whether respondents plan to adopt them.
Respondents were clearly very enthusiastic about these tools. Nearly all (98%) said they believed automated healthcare will be important in creating a continuous, collaborative relationship with providers. The survey also found that 87% of respondents felt that automated healthcare will be helpful in getting patients to engage with their own care.
The next step, of course, is throwing resources at the problem — and it’s happening. Seventy-nine percent of survey respondents said they expected to work on integrating automated healthcare in their organization within the next two years. Also, 44% said that they had a chief patient experience officer or other executive with an equivalent title on board within their organization. This development is fairly new, however, as 40% of these organizations said that the role has existed for two years or less.
Meanwhile, several respondents felt that automating patient healthcare could generate a positive feedback loop. Forty-nine percent of those surveyed reported that they were either integrating or have already integrated patient-generated health data, which they expect, in turn, to integrate into the patient experience efforts.
Among organizations working with patient-generated health data, 73% were gathering patient health histories, 64% treatment histories, 59% lifestyle or social data, 52% symptoms data, and 32% biometric data.
Thirty percent said they were beginning to integrate such data and collect it work effectively, 28% said they could collect some PGHD but had trouble integrating with their systems, 14% said they were just beginning to collect such data and 9% said they were not able to collect this data at all. Just 19% reported they were fully able to collect integrate PGHD and use it to improve patient experiences.
All told, it appears we’re on the cusp of a major change in the role patient services play in provider outreach. It will probably be a few more years before we have a good idea of where all this is headed, but my guess is that it’s heading somewhere useful.
