Apps and wearables.

Can they really be used to improve the patient experience?

The promise of an improved patient experience through mobile apps and wearables is still up for debate. Although the popularity of many consumer apps has led pharmaceutical manufacturers to believe an app will help patients more readily access healthcare information on their mobile device, this is generally not the case. To use mobile apps, the patient must first go to the app store to download the app and then complete the far too many questions required to use the app – a hurdle for many.  Even when patients do use the app, we have found that after a week or two, they drop-off as they find using the app just too much to handle with their other pressing needs. A major investment has been for naught.

If a manufacturer is considering mobile app development, it should be confident it’s for the right reasons and does not duplicate other patient interactions.  To accomplish this, we recommend that all stakeholders meet in a whiteboard session to determine the many patient engagement touchpoints in order to avoid unnecessary duplication. For example, patients already get phone reminders on prescriptions from the pharmacy. HCPs send links to disease state education or upcoming appointments to the phone. Because patient appointments often get rescheduled, app appointment reminder systems don’t always work as they may not reflect the actual appointment timing to create meaningful interaction with that patient.

There are better ways to support the patient with technology. When it comes to healthcare, today’s patients want personal interaction; the kind of personalization that comes from two-way engagement involving a live person. Technology platforms like our Trak360™ provide such engagement based on a live patient support person providing human interaction and follow-up to the information requested by the patient, whether it be via a text, website portal, or email.

Wearables, on the other hand, are intriguing. The biometric information they deliver, such as heart rate, blood pressure, oxygen saturation level, or even an EKG, is typically not within the purview of the manufacturer. These deliver private patient information that should be addressed by the HCP.  Delivering such information raises the ethical question of ‘should it’ be used in patient support programs? Relevant wearables’ measurement of biometrics potentially impacted by a medication could be incorporated into a patient support program to help measure response and safely monitor the patient. However, if patient support sees something amiss, they can call the patient to encourage them to pursue the appropriate follow up with their HCP, but they cannot reach out directly to the HCP unless specifically authorized to do so on behalf of the patient. To compliantly get this information directly to the HCP, the wearable should trigger an information transfer to the HCP when something in the patient’s condition isn’t right.

Technology in healthcare is moving quickly with AI and other digital tools being developed to offer a digital interface for patient self-service. But there are guardrails these tools must remain within, and a patient population that still craves and responds to the human touch.