ICmed kicks off the Digital Health Collaborative
We as consumers have come to expect that the companies we do business with know who we are, know what we like, and provide us with convenient ways to interact with them to get what we need. I spent several years in the contact center industry developing advanced digital engagement technologies that help B2C businesses engage with their customers, including a product called My:Time. There is some remarkable technology out there, and if you are reading this you probably have used it.
Often this means with our mobile phone, where we can access anything we want, whenever we want, in the palm of our hand. Roger Beasley at the 2016 InContextNow conference said it best;
Digital mobility has eliminated three natural states: “I wonder…”, “I want…”, and “I’ll wait…” from our vocabulary. But those in the business do not even talk about mobile anymore. It is all about digital, from airlines to hotels, banks, and even fast food restaurants. Ever hear of “buy-online-pickup-in-store” (BOPIS for those in the know)? You don’t even need to wait for a cup of coffee anymore.
So why is the healthcare industry so arcane and full of friction with every single interaction?
It is new to even think about how patients want to be engaged in their healthcare. Patient portals have been a bomb, and few of us can email our doctors, let alone text them for an answer when we need it.
You may have heard that video visits to your doctor will take over the world, and that trend is growing. But for most of us, engaging with the healthcare system is a very frustrating process.
These are the challenges that the Digital Health Collaborative (DHC) aims to answer through some extensive research, which in the end will involve more than 1,000 subjects. The kick-off the 2017 DHC just concluded last week in Clearwater Beach, Florida and I was there with Jan Oldenburg, ICmed Strategic Advisor and Author of “Participatory Healthcare, A Person-Centered Approach to Healthcare Transformation”. Jan and I helped get this effort off the ground, and it’s perfectly aligned with the principles that ICmed was founded on – empowering consumers to take control of their health.
In addition to ICmed, the DHC is a fantastic mix of like-minded patient engagement enthusiasts from all parts of the healthcare industry. Founding members include two large health systems, a major commercial insurer, a healthcare CPG company, a pharmacy company, and a global medical device and software company. The effort is being led by Stone Mantle founder Dave Norton, who has also written the book Digital Context 2.0 based on ground-breaking work done with B2C and B2B companies in previous collaborative efforts on customer engagement, including brands like Marriott, Coca-Cola, Target, and IBM.
How would you like your healthcare experience to be as good as these brands deliver?
The objective of the DHC is to understand how digital can positively impact personal health engagement for better health outcomes and wellbeing for all participants in the health system.
The center of the research is the person. By defining patient engagement from the patient’s point of view rather than the view of the healthcare industry, the hope is that we can increase current and future personal health engagement.
At ICmed, we are thrilled to have helped Dave get this off the ground and excited about what the healthcare industry can learn by thinking of us all less like patients and more like customers, each with our own healthcare context and preferred way of engaging in our health. Stay tuned for more developments as the research unfolds in 2017! And don’t forget to follow the Digital Health Collaborative (@DHCollaborative) and ICmed (@ICmedonline) on Twitter.