Category: HCSM

Dear Mobile Health App Developers,

We—patients and caregivers—need your help to reduce the demands of self care. Mobile health (mHealth) apps have enormous potential to lessen our burdens. But our needs are often only loosely related to what clinicians and/or the evidence expect us to do. Most mobile apps have ignored this fact by designing tools that primarily reflect the imperatives of clinicians and evidence and were developed with little or no consultation with us patients about our experiences, our wishes or our requirements.

While I can’t promise you that consultation with us is the magic key to successful, well-used apps, I can tell you that without it, your app doesn’t stand a chance.

Forty-two percent of Facebook users ages 18 to 29, and 34 percent of those ages 30 to 49 say that the time they spend on Facebook on a typical day has decreased over the last year. A majority of Facebook users, or 69 percent, say they plan to spend the same amount of time on the site this year, but more than a quarter, or 27 percent, say they will spend less time on Facebook this year.

Children’s Hospitals in Canada have been early adopters of social media

The topic of this thematic issue of Health Affairs, patient engagement is variously defined; the Institute for Healthcare Improvement describes it as “actions that people take for their health and to benefit from care.” Engagement’s close cousin is patient activation—“understanding one’s own role in the care process and having the knowledge, skills, and confidence to take on that role,” as Judith Hibbard and coauthors explain.

Technology, payment reform, and advancements in social and behavioral sciences are creating a perfect storm, leading to rapid acceleration in our understanding of how to improve health outcomes in a networked world, let’s call it “networked health science.”