Patient Engagement Solutions

Patient engagement is a partnership between patients and their healthcare providers’ team where both sides share information and search for the best treatment options. It is opposed to the conventional rigid system where the doctor prescribes one treatment course, and the patient feels free to accept or ignore it instead of discussing other options. 

Patient engagement solutions offer your clients an understanding of their health status, communication, and ability to change health outcomes. Such a solution enables shifting from a fixed formula of time-limited doctor’s appointments resulting in buying the list of medicines. Instead, it offers dynamic tech-based communication in which doctors can reach out to patients anytime, resulting in a constant flow of information. 

Importance of Patient Engagement Solutions

Using technology, doctors can reach their patients anytime and anywhere, foresee and mitigate patient conditions deterioration, and provide helpful information at the right time. These goals can be achieved with the help of patient engagement software, an application, or a set of interconnected systems designed to facilitate communication between patients and healthcare providers, offer educational resources, and otherwise manage the patient-doctor relationship.

Tools for patient engagement solutions leverage innovative technology to improve user experience. Many organizations are already deploying technologies with AI and IoT as they are the most promising solutions in their toolbox.

Different Types of Patient Engagement Solutions

Custom Patient Portals

Different healthcare providers and organizations arrange their internal processes differently, so customized patient portals are necessary to deliver useful features and other important services. Customized patient portals should offer 24/7 electronic access to health records and the resources consumers need for the daily management of their disease. These include:

• Lab results.
• Prescription refill request form.
• Online self-registration.
• Appointment scheduling form.
• Online payment options.
• Social media integration.
• Interactive education.
• An active Q&A system for patients.
• Other custom features.

Mobile Applications Related to Health Care

Several Mobile apps are present to ease up patients’ daily healthcare routine. Patient engagement apps ensure synchronization with various health tracking tools, including wearable technologies, which makes people more excited about managing their well-being, for instance, monitoring their physical activities, blood glucose level, blood pressure, heart rate, mood, sleep, etc. 

Thus patients can also monitor themselves whenever they want to gain more perspective on their health. These days mobile applications related to different health areas are in vast variety, including: 

• Physical wellness and fitness.
• Special diet and nutrition needs.
• Appointment manager with schedules and reminders.
• Overview of test results, medications, and immunization history.
• Access to personal and family health record information.
• Remote consultations.
• Health education (with the use of gamification elements).

Clinical MAPs

Clinical MAPs (Management Applications) are built to aid clinical staff in all types of care settings to deploy clinical protocols and follow patient-care guidelines. Clinical management applications have advanced patient engagement, and with the protocols readily available for clinicians, increased adherence to the application is easier to achieve. Key features of clinical MAPs include:

• Automated Identification: Eligible patients are automatically detected for enrollment.
• Comprehensive Tracking: Patients are monitored, and clinicians can review relevant parameters set by hospital-established protocols.
• Detailed Review and Reporting: Access to in-depth and retrospective metrics for quality initiatives.

Remote Patient Monitoring

Remote patient monitoring is one of the most prominent applications of IoT(Internet of things) in patient engagement solutions. Patients use connected devices to capture relevant medical information and share it with their doctors. For example, IoT devices can collect data on vital signs such as heartbeat, glucose levels, weight, mood swings, and sleeping patterns. All this data is transmitted to the health care professionals allowing them to catch on early signs of change in patients’ physical condition and overall well-being. When patients are directly involved in tracking their medical data, they become mindful of any changes in their current condition, making them more compliant and eager to participate in treatment options selection.

Risk Assessment Strategies

Risk assessment strategies are also one of the important patient engagement solutions developed. With the help of AI (Artificial Intelligence), doctors can go through patient data, identify patients with a high risk of developing a particular disease, and predict their healthcare needs. Based on this information, physicians reach out to high-risk patients and invite them for additional screenings or suggest a personalized preventive/curing treatment plan.

AI-Powered Chatbots for 24/7 Communication

Chatbots aid in patient engagement solutions because calling a hospital can be challenging as patients are put on hold for prolonged periods of time. Intelligent chatbots can serve as the first line of response by filtering patient calls, answering simple questions, pointing patients to valuable resources, or redirecting them to a human provider. Chatbots respond to patients at any time round the clock, offer consistent responses, and can be easily retrained.

Understanding Patient Behavior

Understanding patient behavior has helped a lot in patient engagement solutions. Healthcare providers engage with patients through intelligent mediums that can analyze and understand patients’ behavior patterns. This helps medical staff develop a personalized treatment plan tailored to an individual patient’s needs. For example, AiCure developed a platform that leverages AI to predict patient behavior throughout their clinical trial journey.