Unlocking Success: Adoption of Digital Health for Patient Care
How can we drive successful adoption of digital health solutions for patient care?
We delve into the key challenges that organizations face when adopting digital solutions, and introduce strategies to help guide organizations when navigating these challenges.
Digital health holds an amazing potential to revolutionize healthcare delivery, yet organizations face many challenges in effectively fostering adoption by both patients and providers.
Last month, NPJ Digital Medicine published a literature review on adoption barriers in digital health, with key insights emerging from the multitude of studies they reviewed. A staggering 90% of studies highlighted organizational hurdles as the primary barrier to adoption of digital health solutions. Providers grappled with their heavy workloads and time constraints, while also voicing concerns over reimbursement and privacy issues with digital health. Adding to these hurdles, 88% of studies highlighted social barriers, ranging from providers’ familiarity with digital health solutions to their understanding of patient preferences.
These barriers to adoption definitely ring true to me based on my experience in leadership and advisory roles for health systems, start-ups, and advocacy organizations. We need to get to the core of these concerns, and only then can we find solutions.
In my view, whether you’re a patient or provider:
It ultimately all comes down to trust.
Trust in the credibility of the technology.
Trust in the prioritization of privacy and security.
Trust that it will be worth the investment to learn.
Trust that it will fit with providers’ preferred approach to patient care.
Trust that patients will find value.
Trust in the promise of positive clinical, operational, and financial outcomes.
Building Credibility
There are 5 key ways to create credibility of digital health products to drive adoption: 1) demonstrate an evidence-informed approach, 2) highlight the effectiveness of care, 3) prioritize privacy & security, 4) be transparent about data use, and 5) establish partnerships with reputable organizations.
Strategic evidence use & outcomes
By showcasing a research-informed concept along with outcomes demonstrating the effectiveness and safety of digital health solutions, stakeholders gain confidence about recommending these products to patients. Whether it’s clinical studies, real-world outcomes, or user testimonials, evidence is critical to driving adoption.
A flexible evidence generation strategy is essential. It should be 100% aligned with the business strategy to advance commercialization goals, focusing on the specific clinical, operational, and financial metrics crucial to the business. As the company grows, its evidence strategy adapts with it, fully supporting high-priority OKRs.
Prioritizing evidence utilization from product inception not only fosters stakeholder buy-in, but also expedites product development and minimizes costs by targeting the right concepts from the outset.
Privacy, security, & transparency
To facilitate greater acceptance and utilization of digital technologies for both patients and providers, digital health companies must prioritize robust measures to safeguard patient data and ensure confidentiality. These safeguards include stringent data encryption protocols, robust cybersecurity infrastructure, and adhering to HIPAA and other regulatory standards. In creating trust, it is equally important to be transparent about how patient data is being used.
Partnerships
Partnering with reputable organizations strengthens the trustworthiness of digital health products by leveraging the credibility of trusted entities. These relationships offer validation, access to broader networks, and opportunities for collaboration, all to bolster adoption and acceptance within the healthcare community.
Creating Seamless Integration
Seamless integration is also critical to adoption — not simply in the traditional meaning of interoperability — but also integration into the day-to-day routines of patients and providers.
Doing this well involves being both user-centric in the product design and offering elements of personalization to be inclusive of individual needs and preferences.
User-Centricity
Fostering user-centricity is critical in driving adoption of digital health solutions, and when done well, empowers users to be an active part of the solution development. Understanding users’ needs, preferences, pain points, lived experiences, and operational workflows inside and out is essential to creating a great user experience with products that truly work for them.
Involving users as partners in the product development process, beginning from the earliest stages, is a key strategy to ensuring products will truly engage users and fit with their particular needs and lifestyles. This co-production approach emphasizes the strong value that users offer by actively bringing their lived experiences to create and improve solutions, rather than passively being recipients with needs to be met. This approach can be conducted more informally with a group of users, or more formally through the creation of a Patient & Family Advisory Council or pilot programs with health systems.
In my experience, successful healthcare transformation also hinges on digital health companies immersing themselves in providers’ day-to-day operations when beginning their product design. This process includes shadowing clinicians if possible to become extremely knowledgeable about the nuances of their operational workflows, so products can seamlessly integrate into existing patient care practices.
Personalization
Along with user-centricity, personalization is pivotal. Understanding each user’s unique preferences and expectations is essential for seamless integration into both patients’ and providers’ routines.
Personalizing products to individual needs, such as allowing customization of views, not only enhances utility but also fosters satisfaction, engagement, and a deeper connection between users and the technology. Creating a set of personas can serve as a strategic tool to facilitate customization without overwhelming resources.
For patients, enhancing personalization through customized content, treatment plans, reminders, and recommendations empowers them to take an active role in managing their health, leading to positive clinical outcomes. This tailored approach not only supports patients in their journey towards better health but also encourages greater adoption and sustained engagement with digital health solutions.
Driving Adoption
Adoption of digital health solutions is largely driven by cultivating trust.
Trust can be fostered by building credibility through evidence, robust privacy and security measures coupled with transparent data use policies, and even through partnerships with trusted organizations.
Co-development with users, with personalization to their needs and routines, further empowers patients and providers to embrace digital health solutions effectively. This collaboration leads to better health outcomes and a more equitable and accessible healthcare landscape for all.
At the end of the day, products need to work for patients and providers, not the other way around.
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