ENGAGE: 5 takeaways from MedCity’s patient engagement conference

I have attended MedCity’s annual patient engagement conference, ENGAGE, multiple times. It’s always inspiring and refreshing to connect with long time friends and exciting to meet new ones.

This year we were educated and coached by a wonderful array of speakers and health experts in topics that address critical problems impacting patients and providers today and creating a vision for what health can look like in the future – more ENGAGED!

Many things stood out for me from this year’s event including the widespread acceptance of the value of engagement, expansion of participants across the  healthcare ecosystem, diversity of the speakers and participants, the personalization of care and communications,  and the convergence of people and technology to enhance engagement and improve outcomes.
Here are my five takeaways from ENGAGE:

Acceptance
The concept of “engagement” is becoming almost mainstream.  A few of us have been evangelists for the value of effectively and authentically engaging patients in the healthcare continuum including the renowned contrarian Dr. Eric Topol and the incredibly articulate Dave deBronkart, better known as ePatient Dave, both of whom spoke at ENGAGE.  It is encouraging to see the commitment to patient engagement growing across the healthcare industry.

At the conference, this was clearly exemplified by  patients who were incorporated as speakers into what is an executive-level, business conference. Two of the four keynotes were from patients.

For instance, Anne Stockwell, a three-time cancer survivor has taken her experience of living a full and vibrant life after cancer (3 times) and is creating a platform to help other survivors find their very own way to Well Again.

ePatient Dave provided clear strategies for patients to engage with the care and their care providers. He also advised anyone who might be critical of patients and  the process of providing patients direct access to data, to recognize that mistakes will be made as new skills are learned and implemented.

A unique perspective about the value of patient engagement was provided during the opening keynote by Bev Beckman, who is part of a population health project started by KentuckyOne Health. Beckman spoke about working to improve access and outcomes for patients’ public health. She shared the success that her team is having in deeply and personally engaging people in Louisville, Kentucky so that they can get the care they need at a cost that we can all afford.

These patients can often be overlooked by innovators due to the unique challenges both the patients and those who care for them face like the lack of access to consistent and reliable internet connectivity, the transience in their living spaces (they move around a lot), and the general lack of direct dollars available to fund the care centers and services.

Patrik Schmidle, who is working to transform the care experience for individuals and families who are suffering through the challenges of living with addiction at Clinical Addiction Recovery Institute (C.A.R.I) also spoke. He described how C.A.R.I.  provides traditional recovery programs and are now enabling individuals and families to engage wherever they are with their new mobile app that provides an intensive outpatient program.

Expansion
I was thrilled to see the expansion in number of clinicians and provider
organizations speaking and participating this year and the way their view is expanding beyond the traditional care settings:

Sharp Health System of San Diego came out in full force with Susan Stone, CEO of Sharp Coronado Hospital, and Jennifer Balanky, manager of digital content, sharing Sharp’s approach to engaging patients beyond the hospital or clinical settings through telemedicine and meeting patients where they are on social media

Dr. Zia Agha, chief medical officer of West Health, a nonprofit group to help seniors age in place, and Dr. Ted Chan, chair of the Department of Emergency Medicine, University of California, San Diego, discussed how they are building a better service delivery system for seniors. That includes providing better emergency care via emergency departments designed specifically for the special needs of seniors. They also discussed how care coordination can be improved by aggregating and leveraging local resources, like United Way’s 211 support phone number and a custom designed digital resource center.

Diversity
The diversity of the ENGAGE audience in race, ethnicity, sex, gender, age and geography was remarkable. It was so ubiquitous that it just faded into the background. A few examples that stand out are the strong presence of AARP as well as the session in which I was a speaker -“Why can’t we all get along online” – which featured an all-woman panel, including the moderator.  We know we have arrived when we don’t even think about it anymore. Enough said!

Personalization
One great way to use technology is to enable more personalized delivery of information and care. Dr. Eric Topol shared his perspective of Precision Medicine and the need for secure, simple, and seamless access to data for those who need it and is owned and controlled by the patient.

Geri Lynn Baumblatt with Emmi and her fellow panelists Ted Smith and Andrew Brooks discussed how virtual assistants can fill care gaps and provide more customized care

Brent Walker of c2b solutions explained how a validated psychographic segmentation model can significantly improve communication (personal and non-personal) which results in measurable behavior change.

Convergence
It was exciting to hear how cutting edge technologies are converging  with very traditional care settings and mundane patient tracking measures to transform the care experience for providers and patients resulting in improved patient outcomes.

Lisa Suennen of Venture Valkyrie Consulting led a discussion with Dr. John Loughnane, Winter Street Ventures and Nathan Treloar of Orbita Health about how the Amazon Echo can serve as a virtual assistant for the tidal wave of seniors who want to stay in their homes longer and need a little support to remember activities of daily living and “always-on” access to the outside world in case of emergency.

A big hit at this year’s conference was a presentation by Daniel McCaffrey of Dexcom about the first fully-integrated continuous glucose monitor. I was personally impressed with the way the company is seamlessly integrating the voice of the patient into many product decision and excited about the hint that he dropped about making their data more open.

For those of you who were able to make it, and missed a few of these great sessions, I hope this recap was helpful.

Now I’ d like to issue a challenge between now and Engage 2017: Let’s unify!Let’s identify and involve the most committed and smart people with the most effective solutions across the care continuum and unify our efforts to enhance engagement for everyone involved with and impacted by the care process.

Let’s find ways to link telehealth, with psychographic segmentation, and virtual assistance to remove as much friction as possible for people living with complex conditions and the people who are dedicating the professional and personal lives to live fully with them.

Let’s work together to understand more fully the root causes of barriers to accessing care from payment to location, to literacy and break them down. Let’s have conversations about how successful business models in other industries can be applied to community and public health to automate processes, reduce costs, and enhance everyone’s experience.

Let’s leverage all the incredible talent and technology at our fingertips and create a health and wellness ecosystem that encourages the best possible outcomes for patients and those who are caring for them personally and professionally.

Photo: Ivan Hundric, MedCity News