Patients are more than the sum of their diseases — a patient’s health problems interact with everything else in his life, from his job and home life to his diet and pastimes. But when providers meet with patients, it’s difficult to see every detail.
Even if providers will never know patients as well as they might know a friend or relative, the nuanced, nearly perpetually mined data that modern technology affords us grants providers a better look. When we like pictures of our favorite foods on Instagram or routinely use ride-sharing to certain places, for instance, we create data about these and many other aspects of our lives.
Modern, consumer-focused marketing already utilizes such personal data to deliver precise, targeted ads at the right time and in the right context. What if healthcare organizations could use this same information to help patients live healthier?
How Consumer Data Can Benefit Healthcare
When viewed in the context of a patient’s disease, consumer data can give healthcare providers a more holistic understanding of what influences the condition. Providers can then help patients take better control of their health.
This kind of nuanced patient data can help patients of all demographics in a number of situations. For example, activity data can raise warnings when a previously active patient suddenly never leaves the house, which could indicate serious physical illness. Or with smart home health devices, data could show when a senior citizen starts getting up more frequently in the middle of the night. Such a change in routine could indicate a urinary tract infection, which can become life-threatening for elderly patients before they even realize there’s an issue.
The data’s usefulness extends beyond the individual, too. Utilizing consumer data could also help providers understand a community’s dietary trends and patterns of public gatherings, allowing for successful targeting of community health interventions. Providers can better understand how well communities are served by local healthcare services and whether or not they need to go out of their way to receive the care they need.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
In addition to these benefits, there are many other advantages to using consumer data that many of us may not have even dreamt of yet. For example, Target analyzed consumer buying behavior to determine the health status of its shoppers, and some researchers are looking into analyzing Instagram posts to look for signs of depression. And last year, Nestlé paired up with Medidata to track both movement and nutrition.
In short: Finding new ways to utilize consumer data could revolutionize the way we care for patients.
Privacy Issues: The Ever-Present Challenge
Although the potential for consumer data to revolutionize healthcare is astonishing, utilizing that data safely comes with a number of challenges. If the healthcare field is to overcome these challenges, it is important to understand them and to get patients involved in ironing out the details.
When dealing with personal data of any sort, healthcare providers may know best of all that privacy is paramount. If an advertiser loses control of the consumer data it has collected on its target customers, then information on their buying habits may be exposed. The advertiser may also cause embarrassment by inadvertently revealing personal information, like when Target predicted a teenage shopper’s pregnancy and mailed adverts for maternity items before her family knew.
However, if a healthcare organization is using social media data to check for patterns of depression, and that organization suffers a security breach, then the consequences will be far more severe. Before using consumer data for health purposes, the healthcare community must have a conversation about balancing the potential of using this data with the importance of protecting patients’ privacy.
People should have the right to understand and have control of their data. In the near future, consumer data might only be used for healthcare on a voluntary basis. Providers may only be able to leverage data sources from patients who have given their permission, and it’ll be up to healthcare professionals to police themselves in these early stages.
Putting First Things First
Endeavoring to use consumer data for healthcare purposes is no small feat. For it to work, providers must take a few important steps to ensure that patients and their data are properly protected:
- Define the desired outcomes.
First, providers need to understand the outcomes they would like to see. Is the main goal to better understand patient needs and behaviors? Or are you actually going to try and influence patients’ behavior to help them eat better and exercise more? Knowing the end goal will help healthcare providers understand what data is most important, then target only the data needed to accomplish that goal.
- Understand the data sources.
Second, you must understand the available methods and data sources you can tap into, as well as which sources are most appropriate and acceptable. Would patients benefit from wearables and step-tracking data like what Fitbit offers, or should you focus on asking them to log their food in an app like MyFitnessPal because they don’t actually have access to gyms? The answer depends on the goals you’re trying to meet and the behaviors of the patient population in question.
- Build strong partnerships.
Finally, knowing what data is most useful requires a lot of research and design thinking among various partners. There needs to be a continuous collaboration between the tech companies who build data-gathering solutions, healthcare organizations that utilize them, and the patients whose data is being collected and used.
When it comes to consumer data in healthcare, the biggest hurdles are not technical — they’re sociocultural. Therefore, overcoming them will depend on providers and partners working to truly understand what patients want, then working with them to design experiences that safeguard their privacy while helping them live healthier, happier lives. It’s within our reach; we simply have to recognize the next steps that will take us there.
Photo: Madmaxer, Getty Images
