Smart Health Communities and the Future of Health Delivery

In parallel with advances in medicine over the last half century, healthcare has gradually migrated from traditional home settings to the hospital environment. Today our healthcare system is aimed at treating diseases after they present themselves, contributing to rapidly rising costs of care.  Payers, providers and even pharmaceutical companies have invested in programs aimed at driving change in consumer behaviors. However, data[1] show that 80% of health outcomes are caused by factors over which the medical system has little to no control, such as eating, exercise and general behavioral habits. How can consumers better utilize preventative approaches to managing their health? 

This blog aims to shed light on (1) the history and resurgence of patient health communities as a catalyst for sustained behavioral changes and (2) how digital technologies can be leveraged to shift the paradigm towards a consumer driven health system.

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Source: Deloitte Insights – Smart Health Communities of the Future

Health Communities in the Digital Age

Health communities have existed for decades, using patient networks to foster behavioral health changes in local areas.  Groups like ACHIEVE (Action Communities for Health, Innovation, and EnVironmental changE) focus on providing tools and education to combat chronic conditions such as heart disease, diabetes, obesity and certain cancers. PHC (Pioneering Healthier Communities) takes another angle, engaging with community leaders across health policy, hospital systems to collaborate on promoting healthy lifestyles. Although individually successful, these programs often rely on existing sites of cares, limiting their success to the local communities they serve.

As technology becomes ubiquitous, however, it opens new doors and creates new possibilities to scale these programs. Encouraging health and well-being outside of traditional healthcare settings and taking advantage of the network externalities generated by a growing number of participants, health communities have the potential to allow for more preventive and personalized interventions that can complement the traditional healthcare system. Recent trends in healthcare and digital health trends magnify the potential benefits such communities can have:

  • Aging population and increasing prevalence and cost for long term, chronic conditions

  • Increased demand for primary care physicians to treat these conditions, met with a dwindling amount of practicing primary care physicians

  • Digital advancements in health technologies with rapid uptake in recent years –

  • Wearables like Fitbit, apps that manage and track health conditions like diabetes, weight management and nutrition

  • Reliance on telemedicine to help mitigate lack of primary care providers across the country

  • Increasingly engaged patient communities on Facebook, forums, WebMD – using the digital tools at their disposal to learn more about their conditions

  • Growing number of localized and familiar hubs of care (e.g. Walmart and CVS[2]), allowing broader access to services while providing more touch points for monitor patient’s well-being  

What’s next? Critical Factors to the success of health communities in the future  

  • Patients to Patient network as a source for best practices for all stakeholders

Patients, especially those with serious conditions, can rely on each other through digital communities. Providers can leverage these insights to get a deeper understanding about real-world population trends, helping to tailor both in person and digital services to patients. Drug distributors can obtain real world data on the effectiveness of their products or understand the next wave of medicines needed for specific populations.

  • Patient data as a guide to care, rather than a benchmark for effectiveness

Technology makes data collection and data sharing easier, using patient approved data to increase confidence in treating both individuals and larger populations. This data at a patient and community level can tease out nuances specific to a variety of demographics that could not be quantified with limited touch-points. This allows for customized care, especially in underserved populations.

  • ·Proper incentive alignments across the healthcare landscape

Current incentives in the healthcare ecosystem do not emphasize preventive over curative care. To be successful, digital health communities will need to communicate the value provided that align with stakeholder interests.

Healthcare communities in the digital age can be a real disruptor and have the potential to bring tremendous value to patients and to the overall healthcare community. However, all the stakeholders need to work cohesively to ensure that benefits accrue across the entire healthcare ecosystem.

With this blog, we hope to have given you some food for thought surrounding smart health communities and the future of health. We are looking forward to continuing this conversation with you at the conference in January!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Semi Ibikunle is a first year MBA student at Kellogg, from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  Before business school, Semi worked as a Strategy Associate at GlaxoSmithKline, primarily focused on leveraging primary and secondary market research insights to support a recent drug approval.

Sources

[1] Forbes.com - As CVS Rolls Out Health Hubs, Walmart Prepares Clinic Expansion

[2] Steven A. Schroeder, “We can do better—Improving the health of the American people,” The New England, Journal of Medicine 379, no. 12 (2007): DOI: 10.1056/NEJMsa073350.

Brittany Fulton