Awareness & Adoption Are Deliverables

Yes: health is a product of choice. But, care is a product of circumstance. Jeff Fisher, Eyedog.US advisor and Intraprise Board member shares: 

For most of us, our local hospital serves as the site of seldom encountered life-changing events.  Like the Fire Department, we expect our hospitals to be there for us when we need them, but between visits they’re “out of sight, out of mind.” That’s because the care part of healthcare is still very much encounter-based, and it’s typically not something with which we willingly choose to engage. 

Everyday hobbies like travel or reading pull us to establish close relationships with vendors like Expedia and Amazon. We choose to download their apps, opt into their communications, and give them a fair amount of our highly sought after time and attention. In contrast, those actively seeking to engage with acute care are only those that must. The hospital only commands an active relationship with us during the care episode, after which, we just want to move on with our lives and typically forget what just happened.  

Given this, we can easily see why it’s challenging for providers to bring patient engagement initiatives fully to fruition.  Because of healthcare’s episodic nature, health systems have no way to simply and routinely bring awareness to - and drive adoption for - their patient engagement initiatives.  

This is exactly why awareness and adoption of patient engagement initiatives - digital wayfinding, in our case - are so integral to the success of the solution. The dynamic in which we advertise our solutions requires creativity; to successfully engage our patients, we have to make access to our solution intuitive and frictionless, immediately accessible without requiring excess energy or attention expenditure. 

At Eyedog.US, we know that so much of the value of our solution lies in the ease of use and access for patients and visitors. High impact techniques for communicating - like prominent signage, QR codes, and appointment integration - can reach users without asking them to expend extra energy to access the solution. We’re routinely reminded that sometimes, the simple and intuitive solutions are most effective, and remain more impactful than their more intricate or showy counterparts.

Simply put, awareness and adoption drive the effectiveness of patient engagement solutions. And, in a hospital setting, where attention is limited, tensions may be high, and stakes are serious, it becomes even more important to engage the community in a way that is empathetic and understanding of the challenges, so that it actually resolves challenges without asking for more time and attention than the user has to offer. 

When we meet our patients where they are, and provide tools designed and implemented in a way that resolves problems before they arise, we have the power to make a meaningful impact on the patient experience.