User Experience Drives Engagement in Chronic Disease Management
-
by Rumaisa
Introduction to User Experience & Chronic Disease Management
Chronic disease requires long-term engagement with providers, healthcare systems, and digital tools. As healthcare continues to digitalize, it’s more important than ever that patients interact with healthcare tools on a regular and consistent basis. Specifically, health care tools may assist in monitoring symptoms, treatment compliance, or even overall patient satisfaction. However, simply having access to health apps or portals is not enough to ensure compliance or usability. If patients experience frustration or confusion when trying to use these digital health tools, then they may not engage with them, resulting in poor patient outcomes. Therefore, although we previously discussed the importance of co-design regarding chronic disease management, it’s also important to discuss how user experience ensures these tools are not only functional but also usable, intuitive, and supportive. This is especially crucial when it comes to federal health IT solutions or government healthcare technology, where patients require effective collaboration with digital health tools for positive health outcomes.
Promoting Patient Engagement through Effective User Experience
A common challenge of chronic disease management is sustained patient engagement. This is because most chronic diseases often require extensive use of digital tools. For instance, patients may need to input data into portals, review test results on a routine basis, and review or update medications regularly. Therefore, chronic disease patients must consistently navigate digital health tools so they and their care team have the most updates information possible. Therefore, interfaces must be well-designed, often requiring simple dashboards, personalized reminders based on patient preference, and intuitive so patients can efficiently navigate through them without facing frustration. This encourages routine use and promotes adherence to treatment plans. Furthermore, this is especially crucial for patients with low digital literacy who may already struggle to use digital health tools.
Supporting Providers through User Experience
User experience isn’t just focused on patient interfaces. It’s also important that clinicians have effective and intuitive interfaces when delivering care. For instance, many clinicians currently have to manage multiple tools. This may be different applications for patient portals, internal portals, and even remote monitoring tools. This may require clinicians to learn how to use different systems, especially if they’re each designed differently. Oftentimes, this leads to burnout or slows care. Therefore, user experience can be used to improve how clinicians interact, specifically by streamlining tasks, reducing redundancy, and ensuring that workflows align with real-world expectations and needs. This is especially important when discussing DHA digital transformation, where digital tools are required to be error-free and implemented across various facilities.
Consequences of Not Implementing Effective User Experience
Unfortunately, the consequences of poor user experience can be detrimental. For instance, not incorporating user experience may discourage patients from using health portals. If they’re required to manually input data, but don’t follow through due to a frustrating user experience, then providers may have old or incorrect data to base treatment plans on. This means that treatments are not updated accordingly or may worsen symptoms. Patients may also miss medications or appointments if they’re unable to effectively use patient portals. Therefore, confusion, frustration, and even anxiety from ineffective patient portals may cause patients to avoid using them altogether. Unfortunately, with chronic conditions, this can result in delayed care, worsening health outcomes, and an overall lack of trust in healthcare systems.
For clinicians, not incorporating user experience tools may result in clinicians having to spend more time troubleshooting rather than seeing patients, and may also result in increased burnout and a disruption in continuity of care. Furthermore, a poor patient experience may result in reduced adherence and communication, which makes it harder for clinicians to effectively manage chronic health conditions.
Therefore, it’s apparent that user experience plays a crucial role in making healthcare technology effective, which is important for chronic disease management, which requires long-term engagement from both providers and patients. Therefore, while co-design helps build the right tools by incorporating the voices of end-users, patient experience ensures these tools can be used easily, confidently, and consistently. Therefore, thoughtful user experience is a strategic asset that ensures technology is easy to use so patients and clinicians have positive outcomes.
HITS
HITS provides healthcare management services & works with doctors to develop health informatics tools that promote safe and secure care. We take pride in our services and settle for nothing other than 100% quality solutions for our clients. Having the right team assist with data sharing is crucial to encouraging collaborative and secure care. If you’re looking for the right team, HITS is it! You can reach out to us directly at info@healthitsol.com. Check out this link if you’re interested in having a 15-minute consultation with us: https://bit.ly/3RLsRXR.
References