Examining the Impact of Connected Devices on GLP-1 Therapy

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Why are health programs integrating connected devices?

Before sharing some tips about connected devices, it is interesting to understand why they are particularly useful in digital health programs. Without connected devices, the performance of digital health programs strongly and exclusively rely on the patient. Some behaviors that have been noticed in patients, and which could impact care, include: making an error in reporting the last blood-pressure reading, missing a measurement, or not wanting to report a measurement. In addition, having to think about measurements and manually report them on a specific interface can be painful for patients. Either patients are deeply annoyed by the process and feel less engaged in the whole program, or they abandon the full treatment. By automatically synchronizing data and providing trends and a history of objective data, connected devices provide an answer to many of these issues.

As Dr. Emil Baccash explained in a recent New York Times article, “[It is] taught in medical school that taking a medical history gives you 90 percent of the information you need, with the 10 percent coming from the physical exam.”

If connected devices are well chosen, they can help to reduce friction in the user experience. With less friction, patients are more engaged and become the main actors in their own care, which is key to achieving better health outcomes. Some studies have already proven that connected devices are changing the way chronic care is managed. More recent evidence from the American Medical Association confirms that providers are looking for digital health tools, including connected devices, to treat chronic illness. But the goal of better healthcare outcomes using connected devices is only achievable if the devices are efficient. Here a few tips to help ensure that connected devices will add the maximum value to your program.

The importance of a well-chosen device

The right connected health devices can play a key role in this vision. Better health outcomes are only achieved if connected devices are efficient and engaging. This involves numerous factors: Ease of use. Any friction point along the way - such as installation requirements, complex instructions, or even the need for frequent battery changes will drive down program adoption rates. Patients need devices that are truly plug and play. With intuitive devices, patients are more engaged and become the main actors in their care.  Cellular enabled. For too long, the health device industry relied on Bluetooth and Wi-Fi to gather data from in-home devices, but these were cumbersome for patients to set up, and it limited who could participate (i.e., patients in rural areas or those without cell phones.) The answer to expanding access to patient data at home is using cellular devices that work right out of the box, regardless of whether the patient has cell service at home. This bridges the health equity gap by providing access to all patients, regardless of their tech-savviness or Wi-Fi/bluetooth connectivity limitations. Designed around positive health changes. Most in-home devices are a bit depressing to look at and do little to inspire patients. A sleek look and feel can make a profound difference on the patient experience and motivation. Designing in habit-forming features such as daily weather forecasts and motivational messages can help devices to effortlessly become part of patients’ everyday lives.  Instant feedback. Patients are more engaged if they are able to see the results of their efforts. Being able to see decreased blood pressure or a lower weight after months of struggle is enough to keep patients motivated and confident in the program. A study published in the review Obesity shows that frequent weigh-ins with electronic graphic feedback are effective in preventing weight gain. Instant, understandable, color-coded feedback makes patients feel responsible for and more active in their care. Accuracy. Devices should be highly accurate to provide precise data that will lead to the most efficient treatments. When considering a medical-grade device, look for agency approvals or markings indicating its accuracy. Seamless integration. Devices should have the option to be easily integrated into a program’s existing workflow and to automate data collection, reducing the operational burden and associated costs. 

How do health systems and patients benefit from this model?

Making better health part of daily life is possible with connected devices. These enable health systems to offer a higher level of care while fostering positive life changes in their patients. Through instant access to accurate patient data, care teams can better manage patients’ chronic conditions while alleviating extra work for their staff. With elegant, easy-to-use devices designed around patients’ daily lives, health systems can maximize program participation, improve health equity, and ultimately enhance outcomes for all.  [post_title] => 6 tips for integrating a connected device into a digital health program [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => open [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => six-tips-for-integrating-a-connected-device-into-a-digital-health-program [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-01-18 16:57:35 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-01-18 16:57:35 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://withingshealthsolutions.com/?p=355 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) [1] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 371 [post_author] => 2 [post_date] => 2022-10-19 09:21:00 [post_date_gmt] => 2022-10-19 09:21:00 [post_content] =>

Providing a positive patient experience gives you an increased ability to attract and retain patients. But it can be difficult to know where to focus time and resources for maximum effect. In this article, we’ll examine why it’s worth it to invest in positive patient experiences and share four practical ways to improve overall patient satisfaction.

Why Improve the Patient Experience

Hospitals, medical practices, and other providers have much to gain from improving the patient experience. Here are three reasons why it’s beneficial to focus on the patient experience.

Better patient health outcomes

When patients have a good experience, they generally have more positive health outcomes as well. When someone feels taken care of and respected, they’re more likely to actively participate in their care, reaping the benefits that come with a proactive approach.

Improved reputation

When it comes to healthcare, patients have options for where they choose to receive care. The internet has given patients the ability to research providers and find various options for selecting their care team. Reputation can play a significant role in the choice of one hospital or physician over another.

Greater profitability

When it comes to the business side of healthcare, patients are the customers. And customers vote with their dollars. Accenture research highlights this point: hospitals with superior customer experience ratings have net profit margins 50% higher than those with average ratings.

4 Ways to Provide a Great Patient Experience

When patients have a positive experience, everyone benefits. But providing a great patient experience requires focused attention and the resources to implement strategic changes in the way care is provided. Here are a few practical ways we’ve seen providers improve the patient experience.

1. Evaluate the entire system

Providing quality healthcare involves much more than just the time a patient spends interacting with their physician. A multifaceted approach to the patient experience includes assessing things like how easy it is to schedule appointments, complete required paperwork, access medical records online, and communicate with providers, as well as how patients are treated by critical support staff like those working in the front office.

2. Supplement patient satisfaction metrics with other data sources

It’s possible for healthcare organizations to do everything right and still not achieve what a patient views as a positive outcome. The way patients view their experiences may be influenced by factors beyond anyone’s control. A difficult diagnosis, painful procedure, or a prolonged recovery can negatively impact patient perception. That’s why it’s important to avoid an over-reliance on patient satisfaction ratings. Instead, using this data in combination with other data sources such as average length of stay and readmission rates will help determine where improvements are needed.

3. Focus on boosting staff engagement

Patients encounter many staff members as they move through the various touchpoints of a healthcare experience. Empathetic, helpful staff can go a long way to help patients feel respected and cared for. Staff training and an organizational focus on improving patient-staff interactions are vital for improving the patient experience.

4. Expand the use of health technology

Health tech provides an easy and cost-effective way to improve the patient experience. Online scheduling tools allow patients to schedule or reschedule appointments at times that work for them, increasing the likelihood they can keep appointments. Providing an option for patients to message providers in-between visits can also help to strengthen the connection they have with their care team.

Remote patient monitoring programs are another powerful way to increase patient engagement. Knowing that key health metrics like weight, blood pressure, and sleep patterns are being actively monitored can increase the feeling of being cared for. Additionally, connected health devices provide patients with access to their own health data, increasing the likelihood that they will engage as more active participants in improving their health outcomes.

How Withings Health Solutions Helps Providers Deliver a Great Patient Experience

Offering remote patient monitoring technology is an easy way to improve patient satisfaction. Withings offers a full line of medical-grade connected devices that are easy to use, providing a wealth of actionable health data to patients and their providers.

Intuitive device designs: Withings devices are ready to use right out of the box, making it easy for habitual use. Designed to easily integrate into patients’ daily lives, these user-friendly devices reliably deliver vital participant data to professionals overseeing their care. As an example, 94% of users are still using their scales one year after their purchase.

Metrics dashboard: Built for practitioners, the Withings RPM dashboard provides accurate, patient-centric data to better monitor health parameters and efficiently manage participants. Patients can also communicate with secure in-app communication.

Full range of devices: Withings offers a full portfolio of medical-grade devices. Our smart scales, blood pressure monitors, sleep mat, and activity trackers collect a wealth of actionable patient health data, allowing healthcare providers and patients to more accurately monitor key health measures.

Variety of connectivity options: With WiFi, cellular, and Bluetooth connectivity options, Withings’ connected devices cater to a wide range of technical proficiencies and expand access to healthcare.

Providing A Superior Patient Experience Benefits Everyone

The way a patient perceives the care they receive impacts health outcomes and practice sustainability. When patients feel cared for and valued, they’re more likely to actively participate in their care. The ripple effects extend beyond the patients themselves, creating new opportunities for medical organizations to grow, improving their reputation, and expanding their ability to offer that same level of care to new patients.

Discover how Withings Health Solutions can help you deliver an exceptional patient experience.

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According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), over half (51.8%) of U.S. adults have at least one diagnosed chronic condition, including arthritis, asthma, diabetes, and hypertension. Connected health devices have an important role to play in helping patients with chronic illnesses improve their quality of life. In this article, we explore how these devices can help physicians and patients manage their chronic conditions and make the lifestyle changes needed to realize their wellness goals. We’ll wrap up with three real-life use cases that highlight how connected health devices are being used to empower patients and improve health outcomes.

Benefits of Connected Health Devices for Managing Chronic Illness

The nature of chronic conditions is that they can develop gradually over time. This is problematic because the deterioration can go undetected. Connected health devices can help patients and their healthcare providers more quickly identify the progress of diseases and better manage them for greater wellness. Here are five important benefits of using connected health devices.

Earlier detection of deteriorating health

Connected devices can help to increase the frequency of health checks in between in-office doctor visits, providing a more accurate view of patient health for providers to base treatment. Additionally, connected health devices act as an early warning system, alerting patients and approved medical providers when a patient’s health metrics aren’t ideal. They can also flag an unexpected sudden deterioration, limiting the risk of further complications. With vital health metrics monitored at frequent intervals, providers can intervene more quickly to prevent additional health complications, such as poorly-managed diabetes triggering hypertension.

Increase patient-provider bond

Remote patient monitoring (RPM) programs can create a stronger connection between patients and providers as patients have confidence that their conditions are being closely monitored. During office visits, providers have the opportunity to use the patient’s data as part of the shared decision-making process, allowing patients and providers to work together to create a care plan or fine-tune an existing one. Participation in an RPM program also provides physicians with an additional tool to track patient adherence to treatment plans.

Track progress toward health goals

Connected health devices empower patients to play a more active part in achieving their own wellness goals. When readings are taken daily or several times per week, patients can more easily track their progress. More frequent health measures help patients see how lifestyle choices like exercise and diet directly impact their health.

Share patient health data across a patient’s entire care team

With patient consent, health data from connected devices can be accessed by the patient’s entire care team. Especially for patients with complex health profiles, data from connected devices can foster greater collaboration between providers.

Expand provider capacity

Today, many healthcare systems are stretched thin. Remote patient monitoring empowers healthcare providers to be more proactive in managing patient care. Patients with well-managed chronic conditions are less likely to require more costly and resource-intensive acute care.

Use Cases for Connected Health Devices

The opportunities for remote patient monitoring and connected health devices are nearly endless, ensuring that conditions are detected early before complications can develop. This is even more important as all these conditions are linked with one another. To demonstrate how beneficial this technology can be, here are three ways RPM programs are being used successfully to improve health outcomes.

Diabetes prevention and obesity

Patients use a cellular- or Wifi-enabled digital scale to take frequent body weight measures, which can be automatically transmitted to the healthcare provider. Providers can use this data to spot trends, track adherence to a treatment plan, and evaluate the effectiveness of a weight management program. Frequent body weight measurements also help patients see how lifestyle choices directly impact their health.

Hypertension

Patients diagnosed with hypertension use a wireless blood pressure cuff to monitor their blood pressure regularly. This device automatically collects and transmits the reading, often with just the touch of a button. Using an RPM device for managing hypertension allows healthcare providers to track a patient’s blood pressure over time and can alert them to dangerous spikes in blood pressure that may require urgent intervention.

Sleep conditions

Sleep conditions like sleep apnea can be silent and are underdiagnosed. Using a sleep tracking mat helps to provide an objective measure to identify these conditions. Sleep specialists can use an under-mattress sleep mat to track a patient’s sleep patterns remotely, capturing metrics such as interruptions, time in bed before sleep, time to get out of bed in the morning, and other factors that can affect sleep quality. Some sleep mats, such as Withings’, can also detect snoring.

Withings Connected Devices for Managing Chronic Illness

Connected health devices are an important part of managing chronic illness. With over a decade of industry experience, Withings Health Solutions offers medical-grade devices that feature intuitive designs that encourage high user adoption and retention rates, including a sleep tracking mat, blood pressure monitor, and scale. And our physician dashboard offers intuitive, continuous access to patients’ critical health data in near-real time for actionable information to guide care.

Learn more about the Withings Health Solutions portfolio of smart health devices or request a demo.

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Why are health programs integrating connected devices?

Before sharing some tips about connected devices, it is interesting to understand why they are particularly useful in digital health programs. Without connected devices, the performance of digital health programs strongly and exclusively rely on the patient. Some behaviors that have been noticed in patients, and which could impact care, include: making an error in reporting the last blood-pressure reading, missing a measurement, or not wanting to report a measurement. In addition, having to think about measurements and manually report them on a specific interface can be painful for patients. Either patients are deeply annoyed by the process and feel less engaged in the whole program, or they abandon the full treatment. By automatically synchronizing data and providing trends and a history of objective data, connected devices provide an answer to many of these issues.

As Dr. Emil Baccash explained in a recent New York Times article, “[It is] taught in medical school that taking a medical history gives you 90 percent of the information you need, with the 10 percent coming from the physical exam.”

If connected devices are well chosen, they can help to reduce friction in the user experience. With less friction, patients are more engaged and become the main actors in their own care, which is key to achieving better health outcomes. Some studies have already proven that connected devices are changing the way chronic care is managed. More recent evidence from the American Medical Association confirms that providers are looking for digital health tools, including connected devices, to treat chronic illness. But the goal of better healthcare outcomes using connected devices is only achievable if the devices are efficient. Here a few tips to help ensure that connected devices will add the maximum value to your program.

The importance of a well-chosen device

The right connected health devices can play a key role in this vision. Better health outcomes are only achieved if connected devices are efficient and engaging. This involves numerous factors: Ease of use. Any friction point along the way - such as installation requirements, complex instructions, or even the need for frequent battery changes will drive down program adoption rates. Patients need devices that are truly plug and play. With intuitive devices, patients are more engaged and become the main actors in their care.  Cellular enabled. For too long, the health device industry relied on Bluetooth and Wi-Fi to gather data from in-home devices, but these were cumbersome for patients to set up, and it limited who could participate (i.e., patients in rural areas or those without cell phones.) The answer to expanding access to patient data at home is using cellular devices that work right out of the box, regardless of whether the patient has cell service at home. This bridges the health equity gap by providing access to all patients, regardless of their tech-savviness or Wi-Fi/bluetooth connectivity limitations. Designed around positive health changes. Most in-home devices are a bit depressing to look at and do little to inspire patients. A sleek look and feel can make a profound difference on the patient experience and motivation. Designing in habit-forming features such as daily weather forecasts and motivational messages can help devices to effortlessly become part of patients’ everyday lives.  Instant feedback. Patients are more engaged if they are able to see the results of their efforts. Being able to see decreased blood pressure or a lower weight after months of struggle is enough to keep patients motivated and confident in the program. A study published in the review Obesity shows that frequent weigh-ins with electronic graphic feedback are effective in preventing weight gain. Instant, understandable, color-coded feedback makes patients feel responsible for and more active in their care. Accuracy. Devices should be highly accurate to provide precise data that will lead to the most efficient treatments. When considering a medical-grade device, look for agency approvals or markings indicating its accuracy. Seamless integration. Devices should have the option to be easily integrated into a program’s existing workflow and to automate data collection, reducing the operational burden and associated costs. 

How do health systems and patients benefit from this model?

Making better health part of daily life is possible with connected devices. These enable health systems to offer a higher level of care while fostering positive life changes in their patients. Through instant access to accurate patient data, care teams can better manage patients’ chronic conditions while alleviating extra work for their staff. With elegant, easy-to-use devices designed around patients’ daily lives, health systems can maximize program participation, improve health equity, and ultimately enhance outcomes for all.  [post_title] => 6 tips for integrating a connected device into a digital health program [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => open [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => six-tips-for-integrating-a-connected-device-into-a-digital-health-program [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-01-18 16:57:35 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-01-18 16:57:35 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://withingshealthsolutions.com/?p=355 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) [comment_count] => 0 [current_comment] => -1 [found_posts] => 3 [max_num_pages] => 1 [max_num_comment_pages] => 0 [is_single] => [is_preview] => [is_page] => [is_archive] => [is_date] => [is_year] => [is_month] => [is_day] => [is_time] => [is_author] => [is_category] => [is_tag] => [is_tax] => [is_search] => [is_feed] => [is_comment_feed] => [is_trackback] => [is_home] => 1 [is_privacy_policy] => [is_404] => [is_embed] => [is_paged] => [is_admin] => [is_attachment] => [is_singular] => [is_robots] => [is_favicon] => [is_posts_page] => [is_post_type_archive] => [query_vars_hash:WP_Query:private] => abac7bb87b19b8073600949e7d12b1f4 [query_vars_changed:WP_Query:private] => [thumbnails_cached] => [allow_query_attachment_by_filename:protected] => [stopwords:WP_Query:private] => [compat_fields:WP_Query:private] => Array ( [0] => query_vars_hash [1] => query_vars_changed ) [compat_methods:WP_Query:private] => Array ( [0] => init_query_flags [1] => parse_tax_query ) )