Digital health: A day in the life of a chronic care patient

In this audio presentation, Bain partner Chuck Farkas discusses how digital health technologies will affect the life of a chronic care patient. 

Digital health won’t just transform the back office. It will change the daily lives of people throughout the healthcare system—from doctors, nurses and clinical investigators to patients, including both the seriously ill and the very healthy. 

Presentation transcript: A day in the life of a chronic care patient

Slide 1. Digital health: Chronic care patient

Hello. I’m Chuck Farkas and I’m a senior healthcare partner at Bain & Company’s Healthcare practice. I’m based in the Boston office. And I’ve spent most of the last 32 years working on a broad range of healthcare issues in this country and abroad.

Slide 2. A day in the life of the chronic care patient

Chronic disease and its consequences consume the majority of healthcare budgets around the world. Digital health promises to change that. Let me walk you through a day in the life of the chronic care patient. Let me do that quickly, and I’ll show you how some of the digital tools will change that, and then I’ll come back and go through each one in a little more detail. Patients with chronic disease need to take their medicine, and most of them don’t. Prescription adherence is about 50% with patients with chronic diseases. But without medication management, it’s impossible to control their disease. Patients with chronic disease need to be monitored, but most patients don’t want to come into the doctor’s office or go into the medical center to be checked. New monitoring tools promise to make that easier, to make it possible for people to do that in their home and for patients and their clinicians to monitor it and manage it in real time. Patients with chronic disease also need a lot of support. There are more and more tools for online support—from drug companies, from disease associations, from social networks—to provide patients with the kind of support and encouragement they need to manage their disease. Most patients with chronic disease also have problems with their nutrition. The tools are now there to manage that much more effectively. Finally, patients with chronic diseases need case management. Videoconferencing now makes it possible for their case manager to deal with them more frequently and more cost effectively, producing even better results.

Slide 3. Prescription adherence

So let’s talk more about how we use the tools to help manage chronic disease. Let’s talk about prescription adherence. What’s really important is that we understand who’s at risk—who is most likely not to take their medicine or not refill a prescription. We have more and more sophisticated modeling tools that tell us who that’s likely to be and allow us to think about how to coordinate care around those patients. We also have more monitoring devices so that we can observe when blood pressure isn’t under control or when blood sugar isn’t under control and weight isn’t under control. Those things begin to tell us that it’s likely that someone is not following their guidelines and probably not taking their medicine. And then finally, we have very detailed pharmaceutical management tools: We can track their prescription refills, we can give them apps to help encourage them and help remind them when to take their medication and what medication to take. Or we can even use this technology called GlowCaps that actually light up when it’s time for a patient to take his medicine.

Slide 4. Remote monitoring

We’ve already talked some about remote monitoring. The key is, remote monitoring tools are becoming much smaller, much easier to use, much less invasive, and in that, they’re used much more frequently, and we can then use them to predict, to monitor and manage patient care much more effectively than we have been able to do in the past.

Slide 5. Online support

The hardest thing to do with a patient with chronic disease is to get them to change their behavior. But new online tools are beginning to have an impact. The two tools I would highlight for you are, first, social networking, where patients who are able to find communities of other people just like them. Patients like me are much more likely to change their behaviors because they are part of that community. The other tool that is gaining more and more use with more and more effect is online gaming. Creating awards for people in games to play, games to engage them in, and rewards for sticking with it is also having an effect on the way people behave.

Slide 6. Nutritionist follow-up

Our chronic care patient, Cory, needs to manage his weight. And there are more and more tools for him to manage his nutrition in the digital world. I would highlight all of the diet-tracking apps that are increasingly available, including the ability to photograph what you eat and have your nutritionist evaluate it, evaluate the calorie content and its fit with your diet.

Slide 7. Nurse intervention

Digital technology allows Cory to chat with his case manager, his nurse, twice a week without ever having to leave his home. It makes it easier and much more likely that he’ll do that, and they’re able to use those chats to identify other issues where an early intervention may save an acute episode later one.

Slide 8. By 2020, digital health will have cut costs and increased innovation

If you’d like to know more about how digital health will impact your healthcare business, please don’t hesitate to call me or any of my colleagues at the Healthcare practice at Bain & Company.

Slide 9. Contact us