How Medical Device Makers Can Encourage Patient Engagement

A Deloitte survey finds that patients are becoming more involved in their healthcare, but the different consumer demographics mean device companies must devise unique strategies to encourage more patient engagement. Here's how device makers can get in on the trend.

Marie Thibault

There are signs everywhere that patients are gaining power in today's healthcare environment. FDA recently announced its Patient Engagement Advisory Committee. Patient-reported data points are gaining importance in clinical trials and patient preference information was the subject of an FDA draft guidance document in May.

The findings of Deloitte's 2015 Survey of US Health Care Consumers fit this trend: consumer engagement is increasing in terms of patient collaboration with their doctors, use of online medical information, and use of technology to track fitness/health goals. The survey authors found that 34% of respondents "strongly believe that doctors should encourage patients to research and ask questions about their treatment" while 58% "feel that doctors should explain treatment costs to them before decisions are made." Now, 25% of respondents said they've used a performance report card to compare healthcare providers, up from 19% two years ago. And 28% of respondents now use fitness and health technology, as opposed to 17% in 2013.

Unsurprisingly, millennials are one of the most engaged patient groups. The Deloitte report noted that 45% of millennial survey respondents said they use fitness and health technology. 

Two other types of patients are also quickly becoming more engaged in their healthcare: sicker patients and patients with higher incomes. Tech-based monitoring increased from 22% in 2013 to 39% in 2015 within the group of patients with chronic diseases. According to the report authors, "Consumers with major health issues generally show the highest levels of engagement . . . a promising trend indicating that those who may have the greatest need to be more engaged are, in fact, moving in that direction." The higher income patient group may be more involved in their own healthcare because of "differences in access, awareness, and education," the authors noted.

That's the good news. But how best to reach those groups who aren't yet sick and aren't yet paying much attention? There are a couple patient groups that stand out as least engaged—namely, the "Casual and Cautious" and "Content and Compliant" consumers. The "Casual and Cautious" patients are identifed as having lower use of and less need for healthcare, having low trust of information resources, and being least compliant. The "Content and Compliant" patients are happy with their current healthcare, have a high level of trust in their doctors, are compliant with treatments, but exhibit low use of information resources and health technologies.

Greg Reh, leader of Deloitte's Global and U.S. Life Sciences practices, points out that these patients are least engaged, but are important to reach because of the potential to improve their healthcare proactively, before they acquire a chronic condition. "I think therein lies the opportunity to be able to provide the kind of education to those two segments of the population to actually start to create some additional awareness," Reh says.

The path to increasing consumer/patient engagement is not straightforward and should not be "one-size-fits-all," the survey's authors write: "Sophisticated users will likely want applications and tools that meet usability standards similar to those in retail industries; other users may have lower expectations, awareness levels, and technology skills." 

Many of the survey respondents reported that they'd like to see more efforts like financial incentives, information resources, education, self-monitoring tools, and reminders to help increase their engagement. Reh says, "I think it all comes back to just educating the patient and using all the channels available to help incentivize or move the needle in terms of behavioral change. It's a problem that's bigger than any one company or product."

Collaboration, which has been a major trend among medical device companies in recent years, could be useful for increasing patient engagement too. "Getting it right, from my perspective, looks more and more like a collaboration model," Reh says. "In terms of those that are getting it right, there are a lot of examples, in terms of devices, whether they're monitoring devices or diagnostic devices, that already have had success because of the collaboration, either with the provider or with a pharma manufacturer, collaboration with some of the tech entrants and other analytics providers from an ongoing, monitoring perspective. I think the common theme with all those is the collaboration aspect."

Marie Thibault is the associate editor at MD+DI. Reach her at [email protected] and on Twitter @medtechmarie. 

[Image courtesy of HYENA REALITY/FREEDIGITALPHOTOS.NET]