Innovative, Automated Strategies to Engage Patients At Home Are Key To Improving Health Outcomes in 21st Century
Perelman School of Medicine at the University of PennsylvaniaIn a Perspective piece published Online First this week in the New England Journal of Medicine, a group of researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania propose a multi-pronged approach to the new practice of so-called “automated hovering” that aims to improve patients’ compliance with medication and dietary regimens and other positive health behaviors. These approaches combine newly discovered principles of behavioral economics that offer better ways to motivate patients to improve and protect their own health, technologies such as cell phones and wireless devices, and new reimbursement strategies for health care providers that require them focus more closely on patients’ health outside of office visits and hospitalizations.