Health IT, Patient Engagement, Policy, Startups

What can population health insiders learn from McDonald’s, Coca-Cola?

Get an entrepreneur, a representative from a big box drugstore chain and a healthcare analytics […]

Get an entrepreneur, a representative from a big box drugstore chain and a healthcare analytics firm on a panel together and it’s bound to generate some interesting approaches to population health-level engagement. Maybe one of the most unexpected conversation points dealt with how to use peer pressure to beneficial effect.

“We are incredible social creatures. We are programmed to respond to the people around us and sometimes we call that peer pressure,” Jon Harris-Shapiro, the president of Continuance Health Solutions said. “And if we can leverage that in our culture either in the workplace or in society as a whole, we can effect the change that we’re after,” Harris-Shapiro said.

In response to a question about how to use public service announcements  that motivated people to stop littering in the 60s and 70s, to get people to think about their health more, Harris-Shapiro acknowledged that people interested in population health could learn something from McDonald’s and Coca-Cola.

“I firmly believe that folks that are vested in improving population health need to use the exact same tools, and I am not doing a product endorsement by any stretch of the imagination, that McDonald’s and Coke use to get us to purchase their products: constant messaging, peer pressure as we just talked about, etc.”

The panel discussion moderated by Ashe Damle of MEDgle, included David Perez, CEO and founder of healthcare IT startup Seamless Medical Systems, Walgreens Vice President of Clinical Solutions Silvia Sacalis, as well as Harris-Shapiro. They weighed how best to meet the challenge of making healthcare more personalized, efficient and cost-effective  even as millions more people are expected to be added to the health system this fall. They also offered some insights for companies looking at this area by highlighting different approaches they are using to more accurately predict which patients need help with adherence and identifying approaches that best fit their needs.

Walgreens for example, tracked patients with multiple sclerosis and developed an adherence program to help them stay more compliant. Sacalis also outlined an education program designed to be implemented when a customer begins taking a medication for the first time, particularly if they have just been diagnosed with a particular condition.

[Photo Join the Crowd from BigStock Photo]

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