Patients Want Personalized Digital Experiences. Could a Modular Back End Help?

Picture a patient who googles “sharp abdominal pain” in the middle of the night. They land on your hospital’s website. But they see more than a generic list of services or an article about appendicitis. The landing page pulls the patient’s location. It recognizes the time. It shows them a list of open facilities nearby with estimated ER wait times.

This experience might sound futuristic. But it’s entirely possible with today’s technology. And thanks to companies like Amazon and Google, it’s increasingly in line with patient expectations. Call it the consumerization of healthcare: a rise in demand for smooth, personalized, and helpful patient experiences.

Unfortunately, many hospitals are still playing catch-up. When patients click on a hospital landing page, generic information sits front and center. However, you must add relevant messaging tailored to each patient’s healthcare needs.

To personalize the patient journey, hospitals need a digital back end capable of delivering tailored experiences. In other words, they need a composable digital experience platform (DXP).

Here, I’ll explain how a composable DXP works and how it can help you offer multiple layers of personalization to meet your patient’s needs better.

A modular back end delivers seamless data sharing to power personalization 

Composable DXPs let hospitals personalize messaging at every stage of the patient experience. 

A patient may want to schedule their annual physical. They may want to check their most recent test results. Or they may need to assess whether sudden pain requires an ER visit. No matter the need, a DXP can ensure patients get the correct tailored information in the right channel at the right time.

The key is a modular back end. Each DXP component (from analytics tools to a CMS) connects via APIs to enable seamless data sharing. Components can be mixed and matched according to your needs (e.g., budget, degree of personalization, etc.). 

A customer data platform (CDP) is crucial here: it centralizes data that can be cross-referenced for intent signals whenever a patient interacts. The overall outcome is an experience that helps patients feel seen and cared for – instead of a stranger to their healthcare system.

That sense of recognition is hugely important for patients. In a world with otherwise familiar digital experiences, a cold (or worse, outright unhelpful) interaction with a hospital can feel strangely dissonant. That dissonance might create enough hassle to turn patients off from regular care or seek out other healthcare providers. 

For hospital systems, then, DXP-level personalization isn’t just a nice-to-have – it’s necessary. In the following two sections, we’ll look at two ways you can use this technology to make care more relevant and accessible.

The surface layer: Digital house calls at scale

Composable DXPs can offer multiple layers of personalization. The topmost, lowest-complexity layer mimics an old-school house call. 

Decades ago, someone could call their family doctor for around-the-clock tailored care. Even if the doctor couldn’t visit immediately, they could evaluate whether symptoms were worth an ER visit.

With a DXP, hospitals can replicate that experience across touchpoints. To illustrate, let’s revisit that patient with abdominal pain.

If the patient experiences a flare-up at 2:00 AM, they don’t want to click on your hospital site and see generic reading material. They more likely want an experience that …

• Recognizes the pain they’re in.
• Identifies the quickest path to care.
• Offers useful emergency information.

A DXP can deliver all of that. It can recognize that the patient is visiting your site in the wee hours of the morning – which could mean they can’t get in touch with their primary care provider. So you can craft a landing page that says something as simple as “In pain? Get care now,” with a link to a 24 / 7 virtual doctor. You can display live waiting times for the nearest emergency room based on the ZIP code or device location provided.

These are simple tweaks to the standard patient experience. But they’re a powerful way to provide the personalization customers expect. And the best part for hospital systems? It doesn’t require tapping into sensitive EHR data. That lowers the barrier to implementation – and makes it easier for patients to embrace the value.

Deeper: A portal that knows patients inside and out

Surface-level personalization can have a considerable impact. But composable DXPs can help you go deeper.

Consider a patient with diabetes, for instance. With a DXP-powered patient portal, you can …

• Remind them to come in for their physical so they can track their A1C levels changing over time.
• Push relevant educational material about diabetes management.
• Make an appointment based on wearable data (like blood glucose levels collected via a continuous glucose monitor).

This level of personalization does require access to protected patient data. That means more implementation hurdles, like compliance checks and strict data governance practices. And that’s not to mention patient reactions. Some might find this experience too familiar, if not outright creepy.

Despite all those caveats, this experience is light-years ahead of the status quo. A gradual rollout of increasingly personalized experiences will give your organization more time to acclimate patients to their utility.

Get closer than ever to an “Amazon” experience

I mentioned earlier that Amazon set the standard for personalization across industries. It’s worth noting that hospital systems should only partially replicate that experience. The goal isn’t to encourage unnecessary visits (the equivalent of Amazon impulse buys) but to improve patients’ lives.

However, the patient experience can still approach an Amazon-like quality. With DXPs, hospitals can bridge the current gap to meet patients’ needs at every turn.

Photo: Courtney Hale, Getty Images

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