Dive Brief:
- The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has awarded a $468,000 grant to Partners Healthcare to create an "Engagement Engine" to help drive consumers to use health and activity trackers.
- Partners will work to develop and implement the engine, which is intended to be a key tool in changing consumer habits. Right now, RWJF notes, wearables are popular, but consumer retention has not been strong—many people use the devices for short periods and then drop off the radar. Partners and the Foundation hope to overcome barriers to long-term patient mHealth usage.
- "Wearable sensors and tracking devices have the potential to help people exercise more, eat healthier and sleep better, and we need to learn more about how people engage with these devices to better understand how they can be maximized," Deborah Bae, Senior Program Officer, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, said in the release.
Dive Insight:
If Partners can come up with an engagement engine that can make using mHealth devices a daily part of patients’ lives, it could serve multiple purposes. First, clinicians would have a wealth of data to help guide them in diagnosing and treating illnesses when patients walk in the door. Further, financial officers could use the data to develop projections on utilization that they couldn't begin to design prior to the mHealth data stream. And as patients get healthier, costs could fall, possibly allowing providers to invest more money in highly-utilized departments.