A new report is shedding light on how social media can help healthcare payers and patients alike transform the industry into a better one.
The PwC study found that patients are increasingly relying on social media to find and share medical information. Almost half of the respondents said the information they found via social media could influence them to get a second opinion, and one-third reported using social networks to obtain medical information from other patients.
This report highlights the growing importance social media is playing in health insurance in the United States. Due to the expanding need for these communications, researchers behind the study say that social media should be part of an organization’s healthcare business intelligence strategy to increase engagement among members. Medical director of the Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media went so far as to say that social media is a “moral obligation” for healthcare companies, adding “This is not marketing. This is the right thing to do.”
Soon after the study was released, it was also announced that Facebook was initializing an organ donor program where the social website would help connect potential donors with transplant-needy patients, proving that social media is most definitely making its mark in healthcare.
Social media serves as yet another health exchange system to effectively engage healthcare consumers. And since it is so readily accessible, it’s no surprise patients and organizations are slowly moving towards that arena. Patient engagement is a top priority, making the tools to engage them just as imperative.
Posted in Marketing, Healthx
April 26, 2012 by Jouhne Scott
The Quantified Self is one of the big trends of 2012. To put it simply, “quantified self” can be thought of as self-knowledge or self-tracking through numbers. These numbers measure things such as how long we sleep, how many miles we run, or how many calories we consume in a given day. It would be very tedious for an individual to sift through all that data by themselves; but devices and applications like FitBit, Nike+, and RunKeeper are making this incredibly easy to do. Collectively, this data provides a look into a patient’s daily activity using self-tracking and visualization.
For future healthcare in the United States, self-tracking can increase the effectiveness of physicians by painting a more accurate picture of a patient’s health and helping the doctor visualize that data to better absorb the data. This medical information draws a contextual picture about a patient’s overall health condition, complementing a doctor’s past experience, expertise, and test results. Most providers do not have access to this information unless the patient actively tracks it and brings it to their physician.
In light of this opportunity to increase engagement and communications between patient and provider, Healthx has created a new service that gathers this data and makes it accessible to doctors via an online healthcare portal. This service utilizes Application Programming Interface (API) calls to deliver a seamless, flexible, and expandable health exchange solution that allows our client to leverage the power of this data.
We think this innovative new concept could serve as a huge force in achieving the revered managed care model while filling the technology gap between doctors and patients.
Posted in Engineering, Healthx
April 19, 2012 by Debbie Brown
As healthcare in the United States evolves to cover more people and track more health issues, concerns over how to best process this growing body of data remain.
The mounting volume of health information is what those in the healthcare IT space call ‘big data’, which are data sets that grow so large that they become cumbersome to work with using on-hand database management tools.
In the past, processing big data has caused all kinds of headaches including server blackouts, slower database responses, and increased file-load times. Enter Healthx’s ‘Delta Process’, which helps us automate the loading process and improve overall file loading. The Delta Process acts as a moderator, determining how many files load at a time and which ones need updating.
For example, loading a host of files simultaneously can significantly hamper the efficiency of the server; therefore, Delta reduces the amount of data going into the database at one time to prevent it from becoming overwhelmed and bogged down by files. Likewise, Delta identifies only the records that have been deleted, added, or changed. This way it only focuses on updating those files instead of comparing every single file coming in and slowing down the server.
Healthx implemented Delta about a year and a half ago and it still remains revolutionary in our healthcare management solutions today. Experts agree that how organizations handle big data in the future will become a primary competency in the market, separating the winners from the so-called losers. Streamlining big data provides all of our clients with just what they expect – a seamless portal experience with efficient and reliable back-end processing.
Posted in Engineering, Healthx
April 13, 2012 by Ani Young
Recently Dean Health System’s President and CEO, Craig Samitt, spoke out on the topical issue of Meaningful Use as it pertains to payers.
Samitt himself has helped implement an Electronic Health Record (EHR) system for his organization, but thinks the healthcare industry may be putting too much focus on making EHRs ‘meaningful’ and not enough on other relevant and equally significant technologies. Samitt says to truly make healthcare in the United States “accountable”, we need to expand our idea of what health IT is to include systems such as kiosks, online healthcare portals, computer-enabled triage systems, expansive online access to medical evidence, sophisticated data analytics, remote patient monitoring, and social media. Samitt says he is not alone in this thinking.
It is thrilling to see such an accomplished healthcare leader bring light to other health technologies that aren’t mandated by law but are perhaps just as important as those that are. As a leading provider of healthcare portals and applications, we also believe in the power of our own technologies to transform the industry.
Our own experience has shown that web portals and applications can help payers and providers improve quality of care, better engage patients, cut rising costs, and much more. Technology helps both healthcare payers and providers cut down on the sluggish, administrative work that prevents them from being more strategic insurers and physicians. It also helps healthcare entities better coordinate and improve care quality while slashing costs, which are the major tenets of accountable care.
Healthx technology supports virtually all healthcare goals. The barrage of upcoming mandates certainly makes an EHR state-of-mind understandable; but our clients would also agree that investing in supplementary healthcare technologies like ours is truly what makes all the difference in building a more accountable industry.
Posted in Marketing
April 5, 2012 by Ani Young
A survey completed last month by the National eHealth Collaborative (NeHC) found that a whopping 95% of healthcare stakeholders categorize patient engagement as either ‘important’ or ‘very important’.
Only 5% of the respondents answered ‘somewhat important’ and NONE said found engagement to be unimportant.
Overwhelming as those statistics are, they may not be surprising. Of course, most players in the healthcare IT industry hope to impact patient lives in positive ways.
But when it comes to defining exactly what the term ‘patient engagement’ means, the stakeholders were at odds. Respondents were allowed to pick two of ten definitions to describe how they measure patient engagement. The top five included:
Definition 1: Patient uses educational material and online resources to learn about better health or their own health conditions.
Definition 2: Patient uses tools and resources to manage his or her medical record and other health data.
Definition 3: Patient feels comfortable challenging doctor when something doesn’t seem right or explanations are not clear.
Definition 4: Patient feels comfortable discussing health issues and questions with doctor or nurse face-to-face.
Definition 5: Patient communications with doctor about changes in health status in a timely way.
Interestingly enough, a majority of respondents favored the definitions for self-managed healthcare technology solutions, with definitions one and two receiving 64 percent and 58.7 percent of the votes respectively. Only 38.4 percent felt engagement occurs in a face-to-face setting (definition four), indicating sinking support for in-person engagement.
What’s interesting about this report is that those within the healthcare industry are realizing that patient engagement isn’t what happens when you walk into the doctor’s office anymore; it begins with the technology that can reach those patients on a consistent, daily basis. Healthx is staying at the front of this movement by offering engagement services such as Paperless EOBs, Mobile Apps, our brand new Heartbeat Apps, and other Text Messaging services.
We know engagement doesn’t begin with the patient; it begins with the tools you give the patient to connect with their healthcare. How do YOU define engagement?
Posted in Marketing, Healthx
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