Connected Health: Keys to patient engagement success

BOSTON—“If we can engage patients, anything is possible,” said George Kassabgi, entrepreneur and partner of the Center for Assessment Technology and Continuous Health (CATCH), speaking at Partners HealthCare’s 10^th Annual Connected Health Symposium.

“If we can’t [engage patients] it’s going to be difficult to elevate care,” Kassabgi said. Claims that gamification and social media are the answers to patient engagement are too simple. “Just adding a newsfeed or Facebook page isn’t going to create engagement.”

Monetary prizes also don’t work, he said. They “don’t have a lasting effect and set a difficult precedent. Doing things in the real world and having the ability to engage from a mobile place is very important. But, a mobile app isn’t going to create engagement in and of itself. Lots of companies have learned this the hard way.”

Through his research, Kassabgi discovered four essential elements of engagement:

1. Teamwork. “There’s a reason they call it teamwork—teams work.” He cited employee wellness programs and said full teams consistently overperformed.
2. A layered approach. “You cannot engage anyone over time with a static, one-dimensional experience. People need an unfolding experience that presents new things, new challenges and new kinds of reinforcement over time.”
3. Positivity. People need encouragement and reinforcement, Kassabgi said. “Positivity is transformative.”
4. Small steps. Tiny steps add up over time to create new habits but giant steps are too overwhelming.

CATCH, based at Massachusetts General Hospital, is an ambitious program, he said, to change patient care from episodic and reactive to continuous and proactive. The researchers want to create new models of care. “To do so, we must engage the patient.” They use a layered approach—passive, utilitarian and active. The utilitarian approach is often overlooked, he said. When patients refill prescriptions or schedule appointments, there is an opportunity to capture additional data. Active engagement is the “trickiest to achieve,” Kassabgi said. “We look at each disease profile and figure out how patients and caregivers form groups. Once they form a group, then we look at how we can tap the primate social brain element to engage them in small steps.”

Researchers measure engagement over time but Kassabgi said “we’re not trying to engage 100 percent. If we can engage half or one-third of the people at risk, that’s an enormous accomplishment. If we have them develop healthy habits over three months, we have a loyal customer.”