By Chris Edwards, Chief Marketing and Experience Officer, Conversa Health
Recently, global research firm Parks Associates published findings that stated the healthcare consumer is not getting what they want from the healthcare market.
According to the research, they are waiting longer for care and more than 70% of consumers would not wait more than 15 minutes when reaching out to medical professionals for real-time voice or video consultations. Their research also showed that 72% of consumers using text messaging and secure email would prefer a response within two hours. These scenarios should not surprise us as consumers are now living within a complex network of relationships characteristic of an “on-demand/always on” culture. Healthcare is still earning the trust and credibility to be a part of this network.
A key implication here is around the doctor-patient relationship. We have seen healthcare innovators like Northwell, Ochsner, Carolinas Healthcare, and Centura Health embrace the evolution of the relationship between care teams and patients. These organizations recognize that to meet new patient satisfaction requirements and value-based care standards, it’s imperative they implement patient-centric tools that enhance the quality of communication between patients and their providers. They realize they can utilize technology to better manage healthcare experiences across the care continuum, while making an intentional, strategic shift to transforming the doctor-patient relationship from one that is episodic to one that is efficient, continuous, collaborative, and consumer friendly.
On a related note, Frost & Sullivan’s Patient Engagement research shows that healthcare is going through a significant shift from manual to automated patient engagement. These findings are showing that hospitals and health systems have begun making significant investments in digital patient engagement tools to help transform the way patients and family members are engaged, educated, and empowered. More and more providers are using technology to enable their care management programs to be dynamic, evidence-based, and personalized, and this is creating new value opportunities. This market data appears to be fueling a new driver of more responsive experiences: artificial intelligence chatbots.
Juniper Research recently released global research that stated that artificial intelligence chatbot type technology is expected to save the healthcare industry $3.6B by 2022. “Clinically-intelligent” conversation programs are cited as an example that improve how patients and care teams communicate around key health experiences like chronic condition management, post discharge, pre and post-surgery, patient education, medication adherence, scheduling appointments, and lifestyle health coaching.
As healthcare organizations advance their connected health initiatives, we all need to remember that we are not creating “episodic transactions for our healthcare patients”, we are creating personalized and conversational experiences for our consumer relationships.
It’s time to meet individuals where they are and deliver the experience they truly want.
Chris Edwards is the Chief Marketing & Experience Officer at Conversa Health, which health systems are referring to as “healthcare’s AI care navigator.” Chris has been running global strategy and marketing for healthcare technology B2B and B2C companies for over 20 years. He has been an industry speaker at many international digital health events over the last several years. He has a passion to help healthcare deliver better experiences, and can be followed on twitter @chrissedwards.