Patient engagement hot topic at AMA’s ‘Innovation HealthJam’

Technology innovators, entrepreneurs, big data experts, physicians, nurses and other health care professionals are discussing the challenges and possibilities of keeping patients engaged with their health at an “Innovation HealthJam.”

The Jam, an IBM event, is designed to bring physicians, developers and technology experts together to have open discourse on how the two groups can collaborate to innovate patient care. The event was coordinated through an equal partnership between the American Medical Association, the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS), the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS), Intel, Panasonic, Personal Connected Health Alliance (PCHA), University of California at Davis, University of California at San Francisco.

Among the ideas being collaboratively shared in the Internet chat room are the use of mobile technology and remote patient monitoring to help patients follow treatment plans and make healthy lifestyle decisions.

With a variety of sensors becoming less expensive as mobile technology increases and more data can be stored in and transferred from a variety of devices, new possibilities for remote patient monitoring exist. Combining the technologies with useful medical treatments could forge a way to engage patients, but setting a course that will work may be difficult.

Challenges being discussed include the need to find ways to motivate patients by providing information without becoming burdensome or annoying to the user. Incentives for patients are also being discussed as motivating factors, and a desire for large companies to fund financial incentives or rewards for meeting goals has been an active topic in the patient engagement thread. Strategies to turn short-term users into long-term, engaged patients are being examined, as research shows that “app fatigue” can set in once a person has been using an application for a while.

The event will last through Thursday and is free, although registration is required.