Stepping Stone Partners Healthcare Unbound Uncovered

Several of the Healthcare Unbound speakers referenced Health 2.0 where the patient is empowered with information and tools to make better healthcare decisions. However, Health 2.0 also brings many challenges for the patient around the amount of information, the interpretation of that information and the motivation to act on the insight.

"The biggest wireless opportunity is providing information to people to know if they need to be seen by a healthcare professional", explains Don Jones, Qualcomm's VP of Business Development. This is a very intriguing scenario but think about what it would require. Instead of just delivering data, the technology would need to be very sophisticated to help interpret the information for the individual based on their profile, health history and best practices in care. In some situations, it may be educating the patient that their results are within the normal range for them. However, there will always be a risk of helping the patient decide when the system does not have all of the information including the latest tests and list of medications.

"Patients are constantly sorting through a sea of information", admitted Dr. Joshua Seidman, President, Center for Information Therapy. He discussed the challenges that patients encounter including "misinformation, lack of recall and lack of context" to make sense of the information. Josh mentioned that there are tools to help patients find and evaluate the information including targeted search, contextualization (through secure messaging and virtual visits) and social networks.

"Why are we better at wealth management than health management" asks Tom Futch, SVP of Sales & Marketing at BodyMedia. Tom points out the importance of the person seeing their calories in and out on their personal dashboard to show how they are doing against their specific goals. Tom also surfaces the patient's need for "more objective and accurate behavior modification tools" to continously monitor their activlty, nutrition and sleep.

What will drive patients to adopt eHealth technologies? Jeff Perry, Business Manager for Philips Consumer Healthcare Solutions has learned through research that the content must be tailored to the patient and he described three levels of tailoring content to be most relevant to the patient.

Targeting content to the patient's subgroup (i.e. not just diabetics but high- risk diabetes)
Targeting content to the individual's need (i.e. pre- diabetics, type 1 diabetics, type 2 diabetics)
Personalizing content, which addresses the patient by name and knows the format preferences so that the information is presented based on their preferences (i.e. this may include more graphics for the visual learner).

The way to drive behavior change is by helping consumers "make their next best choice" with the foods they will consume and the activities they will pursue, states Dr Robert Schwarzberg, President of Sensei. His company's is launching a new weight management product designed to deliver essential health related information when the person needs it. He described alerts being pushed to the phone around meal -time to influence food decisions. For example, you may receive a message on your cell - "Fast Food lunch- based on your preferences, here's a healthy meal- a 6" turkey sub". Dr Schwarzerg has also learned about the importance of tracking and feedback to motivate change. You may receive a message on your phone at the end of the day saying today you ate 1,460 calories and stayed within your plan. You met your goal- great job!"

Healthcare technologies companies are quickly learning that it is all about the information (the devices are becoming commoditized) and that the information needs to be accessible as well as must be delivered at the right time in the right way to drive consumer adoption and ongoing use.