Recently I met four different patient-centric companies who took what was a primarily paper-based client engagement process and content and digitized it. They are great proof points that healthcare innovation doesn’t require fancy AI, complex biz models, integration with EMRs, and all the other things folks try hard to add to their healthcare solutions, because they can or think they need to.
Putting content online sounds simple, right? Yes, it is. These companies are improving the efficiency, measurement, and value of an inherently inefficient process. But what all these companies also show is that getting the patient experience right is always going to be hard work, and that this experience extends beyond the content.
Adding efficiency and measurement
Pear Therapeutics has a smartphone-based solution for treating addiction. The app uses established processes and content to treat addiction. But digitizing the process allows them to follow how folks are using the content, add more immediate and interactive incentives, and connect the process to humans in the loop. Alas, the app is hidden behind a prescription, so I am looking forward as the company explores aspects of first-use, exploration, and usage outside of the prescription.
Access and first use opening up a new markets
Indeed, Constant Therapy stumbled upon this user insight of non-prescription use. Constant Therapy encoded proven aphasia therapies into software and placed them on a tablet. But a small tweak in access (putting the app in an app store for easier updating during trials) and engagement (putting in a support email at the login screen) opened up the software to folks who want to use (and pay for) it on their own, outside the therapist’s office. This just goes to show that users sometimes have a better idea of the value and use of software than the product maker. I am interested in seeing how Constant Therapy navigates the direct therapeutical day to day (original use of the software) and the attention and needs of the grassroots demand for the content and engagement process (novel uses).
Freshness and connections
The inefficiencies in the use and access to content isn’t only in clinical content. Wellist has taken the reams of normally outdated non-clinical resource information patients are usually pointed to upon discharge and wrapped that up in a digital experience. This permits closer connections between the resources, say wig makers or transportation providers, and the patient, facilitating and accelerating the connection. But also, the content stays up to date, and Wellist can keep an eye on how the patients use the content and where attention needs to be paid.
“Digital-also” ways of thinking about engagement
All of these companies also understand the value of a good patient experience across physical and digital modalities. App stores and the web are littered with solutions that place content into some sort of digital-only experience and fail. That’s because just digitally replicating a broken or inefficient paper-based process will not make it better. You need to think of it in a “digital-also” context, thinking of how across physical and digital modalities patients will access and engage with content and care givers. Also, and important to me, how can we use the digital modalities of access, say a mobile phone, in a way that we could never with paper-based options (such as communication, measurement, freshness, gradual investment in attention, physical-digital hand-offs)?
For example, Wellframe has nailed the whole software, content, people, and patient engagement process. Wellframe were able to help their customers better engage with at-risk populations through content and actions, helping the patients get through the many tasks they manage. As an added benefit, with the efficiency and measurement afforded by digitizing what is normally a resource and content intensive, mostly phone-based, process, Wellfame’s customers have also been able to expand and augment what they do without having to increase the number of people involved. And this doesn’t mean that the engagement gets short shrift, but, on the contrary, the engagement is richer and easier to provide at scale. What else will Wellframe’s customers now be able to provide?
What do you want to do?
These four companies show existing paper-based processes and content wrapped in a good efficient experience can deliver an incredible impact on care. Innovation doesn’t have to require AI, chatbots, complex analytics, or the latest emerging tech. While the digitization of the content might be simple, each of these companies worked hard on a great digital experience to help the customer and patient.
There are enough challenges in healthcare where a good digitization of a process can increase engagement, improve connections to services and content, and provide a foundation to scale and deliver better care.
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