Health Technology Forum promotes affordable health care through exploration and adoption of innovative technologies that positively transform healthcare. The Innovation Conference on April 13th, from this socially responsible perspective, fostered interesting dialogues in various panels. Highlights below from one of the panels.
Patient Engagement Panel
Promise and potential for patient engagement, in the context of consumer-centric environment, was discussed, in this panel moderated by Neil Versel, HIT journalist at Uni-Versel Media and freelance journalist for MobiHealthNews and Information Week . Dr. Laura Esserman, Professor at UCSF School of Medicine, talked about the importance of giving patients access to information, about their own health routinely, to create loops of continuous learning systems. “We need the data to drive and move care”, said Esserman. Jan Oldenberg, VP at Aetna and author of “Engage”, said, “engaged patients have better outcomes with fewer hospitalization, less adverse events, and engaged patients continue to make better choices”. The drivers for engagement include, convenience, meeting patients where they are, providing right tools and services, connecting them with caregivers, and giving relevant and timely data, said Oldenberg.
According to Amy Tenderich, founder of Diabetes Mine, currently the systems are not designed to support patients. A strong driver of patient engagement is their ability to connect with each other, said Tenderich. People often may not be interested in managing their health, but they respond to managing their self-image, said Dr. Kyra Bobinet, Senior Designer-Instructor in Behavior Design at Stanford University. Understanding the contributors to self image and explaining how the care will impact that, is more likely to get the patients engaged in their own care, said Bobinet.
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