3 Types of Patient Engagement Tech in the Healthcare Field

When you’re creating content for doctors or patients, it’s important to encourage engagement. When your goal is to strengthen the relationship between patients and providers, it’s important to adopt techniques and tools that will drive this engagement.

Studies indicate that the more engaged patients are with their health care, the better their chances are with having healthy results. That’s part of why patient engagement technology has emerged as a desired niche to embrace among healthcare and medical device providers. It is an integral part of healthcare reform identified in the Affordable Care Act to improve the quality of care.

Research shows that its adoption is increasing and currently stands at 25 to 35 percent, and one survey highlights that 98 percent of patients report their ability to access patient portals.

Thus, it’s important to understand patient engagement technology and how to use it. There is a wide selection of technology options you can use to help better engage with patients. Here are a few you need to know:

Apps, Smartphones, and Mobile Devices

The prevalence of smartphones and mobile devices make engaging patients via these devices ideal. According to the Pew Research Center, approximately 77 percent of the American population owns a smartphone. Moreover, 50 percent of the U.S. population owns a tablet.

The data culminated from these mobile devices is expected to increase by 700 percent in 2021. These statistics help to solidify engaging patients via technology.

Apps for these devices help to drive this engagement can help improve communication between patients, doctors, and their medical care providers via data exchange and even access to professionals.

For example, Talkspace allows patients who need therapy to speak to doctors via text, audio, and video. The app even incorporates artificial intelligence (AI) by using IBM’s Watson to match patients with therapists.

Online Patient Portals

Online patient portals offer an array of benefits for patients and healthcare providers, as they simplify and encourage engagement to automate processes for patient healthcare management.

For example, patients are able to access appointment information, view the summary of their visits and use a secure email to ask doctors questions. Some online portals also provide educational content for patients in the form of frequently asked questions, user guides, and blog posts as resources to improve patient engagement.

Medical Device Integration via Smart Sensors and Wearables

Thanks to the Internet of Things (IoT), medical devices, such as heart monitors and sleep diagnostic devices, can be morphed into smart devices via sensors. The sensors located within the medical devices communicate with one another and can collect information about patients to get real-time vitals outside of patient-doctor visits.

One sensor-supported medical device in the making was once featured on the popular fictional show Star Trek but is now becoming a reality. The tricorder will use sensors that are non-invasive to collect important data pertaining to patients, including their body chemistry and vital signs.

Wearable medical devices, such as blood pressure monitoring devices, also help enhance communication and quality of care among patients and their healthcare providers to help take preventive measures to halt chronic illnesses, such as hypertension.

With the different options available for patient engagement technology, it’s vital that medical professionals using and distributing these devices are well trained and provided with the most accurate and up to date content. Distributing information and valuable content at scale is plausible when using a digital content distribution platform as part of your content distribution strategy. Consider employing a digital content distribution platform to drive engagement.