Social Media- Health IT - Behavioural Finance

Human behavior is one of the most important factors in the overall decision making process of a human being. Research has proved that behavior also plays an equally important role in the overall health of a human being e.g. many chronic diseases could be avoided by doing simple lifestyle changes. In this thought paper we try to explore human psychology, behavior and how health IT and social network interlink them to provide a solution to some of the key problems that healthcare ecosystem is facing such as high costs, missing  emotional connect and care

Understanding Social Media Better: Social media has varying definitions; the simplest is “Content for the people, by the people”.  Man is a social being and with technology making inroads to our day to day lives, there is a fusion that has been created between sociology and technology, the fact that we are connected through various online mediums proves that.

Social media is available in multiple forms for varying end use, but with the same intent of sharing user generated content with the user communities. Face book, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, RSS etc, the list is endless. The inroads into healthcare are being made recently, but the list is not shorter their either. WebMD , Mayo Clinic , ZocDoc and many more services are helping people collaborate and connect, with a simple motto, to help solve their medical problems and leveraging technology to provide better connect and care

The Numbers don’t lie, so let’s have a look at them: Quantcastestimates Facebook has 135 million monthly unique U.S. visitors in October 2010. According to Social Media Today, in April 2010 an estimated 41.6% of the U.S. population had a Facebook account. eMarketerpredicts in 2011, 63.7% of US internet users will use the various social networks on a regular basis, amounting to nearly 148 million people. According to a ManhattanResearch study, in 2010, 89 million U.S. adults tapped social media resources for health-related purposes, compared with 63 million in 2008 and 38 million in 2007. This translated to approximately 1 in every 3 American using social media for health related issues.

The Past, Present and the Future: The era when the target market was local is fast fading, health magazines relying only on the print medium are fast loosing their share, television too is living through its slow death, and websites come up and go down every day and very rarely become an enigma. The flavor of the season is social media; riding a high wave and which probably is here to stay for longer than any one can predict, as its built on the basic essence of the man being a social being and the strong need of having a common platform to share information/ experiences with others like him.

When we refer to term social media for healthcare, industry experts have also dubbed it as Health 2.0, as it forms the one of the core components of Health 2.0. So is Heath 2.0 following the foot print of Web2.0? Let’s have a look at what Web2.0 is all about. Web 2.0 laid the framework for social media by transforming static web to dynamic, bringing in cloud computing and giving more control to user. These same features go down further to build Health 2.0, which is another name of “Social Media for HealthCare”; the definitions for Health 2.0 are as varied as Web2.0 but to put it in simple words:

Health 2.0 is the term representing the possibilities between health care, eHealth and Web 2.0. A concise definition of Health 2.0 is the use of a specific set of Web tools by actors in health care including doctors, patients, and scientists, using principles of open source and generation of content by users, and the power of networks in order to personalize health care, collaborate, and promote health education.

What makes health 2.0 work?The answer lies in another question, what makes social networking work? Social networking works on basic principles of human psychology and behavioral economics. Top this up with health services, social communities where problems could be discussed, experiences shared with a better connect, availability of information 24/7 and this would become a strong health ecosystem focused social networking product.

Social health network can help influence human behavior to improve one’s lifestyle and and at the same time help the healthcare ecosystem cope up with the challenge of rising costs. The shift from transactional events to emotional events will mark the onset of Health2.0.

Some of the biggest challenges for US healthcare today are the rising cost, high number of uninsured population, missing emotional connect and lack of 24/7 accessibility to trustworthy source of information for decision making  perspective. The social media provides powerful tools which can help alleviate the current situation of healthcare ecosystem. Let’s have a look at various avenues that social network provides us with:

Rising healthcare costs: Apart from factors such as high administrative costs, high overhead costs and large number of population in Medicare bracket there are quite a few other factors which often get overshadowed due to the overall impact being smaller as compared to the big hitters like high administrative costs. Three such factors are:

• Chronic Diseases: Chronic diseases is the biggest problem the nation is facing and one-third of all adults do not meet recommendations for aerobic physical activity based on the 2008 Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans asper Center for disease control and prevention (CDC)

• Prescription mismanagement: This is simply not sticking to the prescription and the cost overruns arising due to that. Three out of four Americans don’t take their drugs as directed, almost half forget to take the medications on time, one third don’t refill prescriptions on time and one third simply stop taking the medication before they are advised to do so as per National Community Pharmacists Association and Pharmacists for the Protection of Patient Care Adherence Survey 2006.

• All this contributes to one big problem of medical condition being left untreated and results into higher costs for overall healthcare ecosystem. As per a study done by NEHI the cost of forgetting medication, not refilling on time and not taking drugs as per prescription is around USD 300 Billion per year

• Appointments mismanagement: This again is very similar to prescription mismanagement and in this case the member doesn’t stick to appointments or simply misses an appointment. Although there is no official record keeping of missed appointments but rough estimates suggests this can be as high as 30% of total appointments and the cost can be staggering USD 150 Billion per year

Missing Emotional Connect: In a drive to control costs and reduce administrative overheads, the healthcare industry has become very transaction oriented and “care” which is the second half of the word healthcare but equally important has been found lacking

How can Social Media help?

Chronic Diseases: Human behavior could be influenced by using social media as a mechanism. Communities could be created and promoted by health care payers for members to join in. People with similar condition and interest can join communities and keep each other motivated and on track for the lifestyle changes e.g. doing physical activity on regular basis, changing sleep pattern or eating habits. It always helps to have someone else care for you and keep providing regular morale boosts to do what is right. After all, encouragement and care are two strong reasons

Members who are encouraging others, helping others or member who consistently sticks to the lifestyle recommend for them could be awarded by payers or by communities. One simple award could be on the spot waiver of co-pay or coinsurance for a particular visit or recognition from payer or other community members by using a simple “Thank You” note. Opportunities are limitless here….

Prescription Mismanagement / Appointments Mismanagement: Very similar to communities for chronic disease, member can use social media could be used to track the appointments and prescriptions and other community members can help with reminders, encouragement notes or maybe even pitch in to carpool to go for prescription refill or for an appointment. Again, opportunities are limitless here and such small steps will go a long way in helping alleviate the problem in small way

Improve “care” with better connect: Social media will help bring members with common problems together, discuss and take an advised call on what they want to do. It also provides an opportunity for communities to exist and help provide the emotional care for someone who is going through a bad time.

Social media provides a unique opportunity to leverage a strongest mechanism, which is far reaching, has been accepted by everyone and has become part of day to day life of almost everyone. If leveraged correctly, social media could be the innovative solution that healthcare industry has been looking for to reduce costs, disburse information 24/7 and improve on the emotional connect with members

References:

1. http://blogs.hbr.org/sviokla/2010/03/how_behavioral_economics_can_h.html
2. Can Behavioral Economics Alter the Healthcare Cost Curve by Diamond Management and Technology Consultants.
3. http://www.nehi.net/publications/

About The Authors

Neeraj Kakkar, with over 10 years of experience in field of IT and healthcare insurance domain. Has program managed strategic initiatives for the top 3 healthcare companies of the US that included re-engineering of member domain from a legacy based application to a 3 tier, SOA based mainframes hosted application, a large enterprise wide data warehouse creation and managing communications program for enterprise wide implementation.

Manish Nachnani has over 6 years of experience and   works as a Lead System Analyst in the Health IT field. His areas of expertise include ICD-10 Impact Assessment and

Remediation, HIPAA 5010, Social media with interest in  m-Health, e- Health, Health 2.0 and Health Innovations.