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The Power of Patient Centered Care and Technology in Clinical Trials
There is a buzzword in healthcare and clinical trials that isn’t going away anytime soon: patient centered care. Most healthcare providers and study coordinators understand its importance, but how can they both utilized this concept in a modern society?
As technology steadily advances, improving patient engagement in clinical trials continues to become increasingly important. Here’s how healthcare providers and study coordinators can effectively use technological advances to improve patient centricity.
Although the topic of patient centered care and patient engagement has been discussed a lot in the past, the continual advancement in technology is quickly changing the way patients would like to interact with professionals in the healthcare industry. Many patients are embracing the digital age, which is a time where most us are living our lives primarily through our smartphones.
The article “The Importance Of Patient Engagement” mentions a recent report by Kings Fund showed how patients are embracing new technology, and they also expect providers to use digital advances in the healthcare setting for better patient centered care. Realizing this important fact about patients’ expectations, many healthcare providers are implementing digital health into their practices to track and manage patients’ health more efficiently while empowering them to be productive partners in their care through improved patient access. There is obviously a real opportunity to empower patients through a digital medium in healthcare and beyond.
Mobile messaging is not a new technology, but it’s being used in many innovative ways in clinical research to enhance patient centricity. A great patient engagement platform that features revolutionary mobile solutions can be used to conduct surveys and collect data via text messaging, send automated text-based interventions, schedule appointment reminders, participate in live, two-way TextChat, deploy messages with links, text, images, and emojis, send real time or pre-scheduled alerts, deliver gift code incentives for completed surveys, and so much more. When mobile messaging is used effectively, study coordinators will experience improved retention, enhanced patient engagement, and better collection of data from research teams.
Whether it’s employed in healthcare settings or clinical trials, the ultimate goal of empowering patients through patient-centric technology is to communicate “in-line” with their lives. Just like technology-supported self-management innovations can empower patients to more effectively understand and manage their condition via better patient access, mobile messaging that takes into the patients’ needs and desires can encourage them to remain an active and engaged participant in clinical trials. To continue the trend of improving patient engagement through a digital medium in clinical trials, there needs to be a more collective understanding of patient-centered care, and how the concept can be used in a research environment to meet study goals.
Are you looking to improve participant engagement, increase retention, integrate text-based interventions, or collect data in your research? If so, contact us for a free consultation, or you can get quick access to our pricing guide here.
