There are plenty of online healthcare sites and scores of mobile apps that aim to engage patients in healthy behaviors. But challenges have include making online health and wellness programs "sticky"--not only getting patients to sign up for the programs but to keep them engaged in them long-term.
And using technology to engage patients in their health through technology can also boost patient loyalty, as FierceHealthIT recently reported.
Patients do seem to want tech tools to keep them healthy, according to another recent study. But engaging patients who most need to improve their health--such as those with chronic conditions--is still a huge challenge.
Although prompting can increase self-monitoring rates, the decrease
in self-monitoring after the promoting period suggests that additional
and online reminder prompts would be useful, the authors concluded. And
the use of technical assistance calls appeared to have a greater effect
in promoting self-monitoring at a therapeutic threshold than email
reminders and the tailored self-monitoring reports alone.
To learn more:
- see the JMIR study report
- check out the 2010 study
e-Behaviorial Health
Benefit from new technologies... enable people to have remote access to CBT
