Interesting read, thanks for sharing. I can see how engaging with or facilitating patient communities could be financially beneficial for member-owned health plans, but I'm not totally grasping what the financial incentive is for more traditional payor models. Is the idea that patient communities improve patient outcomes, resulting in lower cost of care, and thus lower claims for insurers?
yes, and I consider patient communities a type of general patient engagement in a very low cost way (which basically every insurer is thinking about anyway)
Patient communities built for eliciting behaviour change, care delivery by “moderators” and hence, actually improving outcomes.
Just curious if there are similar examples from other industries of successful community engagement and driving behaviour change or delivering service at community level?
I think weight loss programs have done this well and it depends what you define as behavior change. Reddit causing a massive buy up of GME feels like a behavior change to me :)
Fair point on Reddit GME. :) But I was thinking more on longer term sustained behaviour changes at community level instead of episodic bursts. Weight loss programs are great examples though.
Clayton Christensen in 'The Innovator's prescription' made a similar comment about the treatment of chronic conditions. He segregated treatment into three area: value added processes like surgeries, solutions shops for diagnosis, and facilitated networks for chronic conditions. The model of a patient community works into the facilitated network model for any type of disease that lasts longer than in the hospital. The question arises as to what type of facilitation is the best. It is likely different for each type of condition/disease. Looking forward to your thoughts on the different models.
Very thought-provoking--especially your point about using condition-specific risk pools for insurance. One minor observation: even though advertising was a common monetization model for many types of online businesses, PatientsLikeMe never served ads to its members; instead, they monetized by engaging members in research (with the full consent/awareness of research participants).
Great perspective. Key areas where your 2.0 thinking is being discussed too:
1) concept of social incentives out of Penn (Nudge leaders in healthcare), penned by David Asch (Engineering Social Incentives for Health) may help extend engagement tools beyond gaming, to foster taking collective action across like-minded peers/patients
3) Dartmouth Preference Lab/research fueled initial outlook for DREAM project -- which called out the need to feed communities with credible/validated pat info and a process for doing do. Project now defunded, but provides strawman/validation of need for collaboration across stakeholders to ensure valid content/purposeful patient engagement within communities and framework needed to study patient interactions to learn.
you said you've seen a lot of new patient communities starting up -- could you share a few?
Interesting read, thanks for sharing. I can see how engaging with or facilitating patient communities could be financially beneficial for member-owned health plans, but I'm not totally grasping what the financial incentive is for more traditional payor models. Is the idea that patient communities improve patient outcomes, resulting in lower cost of care, and thus lower claims for insurers?
yes, and I consider patient communities a type of general patient engagement in a very low cost way (which basically every insurer is thinking about anyway)
Awesome read Nikhil.
Patient communities built for eliciting behaviour change, care delivery by “moderators” and hence, actually improving outcomes.
Just curious if there are similar examples from other industries of successful community engagement and driving behaviour change or delivering service at community level?
I think weight loss programs have done this well and it depends what you define as behavior change. Reddit causing a massive buy up of GME feels like a behavior change to me :)
Fair point on Reddit GME. :) But I was thinking more on longer term sustained behaviour changes at community level instead of episodic bursts. Weight loss programs are great examples though.
Clayton Christensen in 'The Innovator's prescription' made a similar comment about the treatment of chronic conditions. He segregated treatment into three area: value added processes like surgeries, solutions shops for diagnosis, and facilitated networks for chronic conditions. The model of a patient community works into the facilitated network model for any type of disease that lasts longer than in the hospital. The question arises as to what type of facilitation is the best. It is likely different for each type of condition/disease. Looking forward to your thoughts on the different models.
I still have to read that - thanks for flagging!
Very thought-provoking--especially your point about using condition-specific risk pools for insurance. One minor observation: even though advertising was a common monetization model for many types of online businesses, PatientsLikeMe never served ads to its members; instead, they monetized by engaging members in research (with the full consent/awareness of research participants).
for sure! I did add the bit about data as well :)
Great perspective. Key areas where your 2.0 thinking is being discussed too:
1) concept of social incentives out of Penn (Nudge leaders in healthcare), penned by David Asch (Engineering Social Incentives for Health) may help extend engagement tools beyond gaming, to foster taking collective action across like-minded peers/patients
2) Susannah Fox speaks to the collective power of patient groups to affect change/highlight why/how patient communities can become more powerful change agents through enabling self management (https://susannahfox.com/2020/07/15/how-peer-to-peer-health-advice-can-help-people-take-their-meds-on-time-and-so-much-more/)
3) Dartmouth Preference Lab/research fueled initial outlook for DREAM project -- which called out the need to feed communities with credible/validated pat info and a process for doing do. Project now defunded, but provides strawman/validation of need for collaboration across stakeholders to ensure valid content/purposeful patient engagement within communities and framework needed to study patient interactions to learn.
thanks for sharing these! hadn't seen them before
Love that you are helping drive a conversation Nikhil! Your perspective is so important!