The Risk of Being Product-Centric Versus Population-Centric

Recently, Accenture reported that poor healthcare apps can cost hospitals $100 million dollars a year. While 66 out of 100 of the largest hospitals have consumer-facing apps, only 2% of their consumers are using those apps.

Additionally, they reported that only 11% of hospital apps offered access to the most wanted services, such as access to medical records or the ability to schedule appointments.

It makes sense that hospitals would want to stay relevant to their customers, and with all of the buzz around digital health, an app seems like it would be an ideal way to reach patients on media they commonly use.

However, there is a risk that instead of being “population-centric,” hospitals can become “product-centric” by focusing on what’s trendy and new versus what really works for their patient populations.

Why Population Centricity Makes Sense (and Saves Cents!)

Before selecting a new app or even a marketing campaign, hospitals should look to connect with patient populations by understanding their media and personal preferences.

For example, let’s say a hospital system in San Antonio, Texas, was considering developing a new app to encourage their diabetic patients to track their daily eating habits.

We could create a profile of those Diabetics in San Antonio to learn their digital media and healthcare habits before the decision to create this new app is made.

In our San Antonio Diabetic’s example, we learned a few very interesting facts about their media preferences*:

• 42% use their cellphones for basic calling rather than other features
• 22% only use their cellphone in an emergency
• Only 10% of San Antonio Diabetics have downloaded new apps in the last 30 days
• Their most frequented apps are games, maps/navigation and banking. Fitness tracking or healthcare doesn’t even appear on the top ten list.

Clearly, an app for this population would be a miss. They wouldn’t be likely to download a new app and even then, a little less than half the population is only grabbing their cellphones to make phone calls and nothing else.

A better fit for this population would be communicating messages across television and radio—66% learn about healthcare information from TV. To keep Diabetics on track, face-to-face communication works best. 65% say they rely on their doctor to guide them through medical issues and 57% say they always do what the doctor tells them.

Population-Centric, Not Product-Centric Connects You to Your Patients

By reviewing population level data, hospitals can easily understand the needs, wants, desires and beliefs of their patients so they can create programs that are customized to the needs of their populations and not necessarily to the whims of “what’s trending.”

A population-centric point of view is especially important given today’s healthcare paradigm of one-to-one healthcare, personalized medicine and patient engagement. CentraForce Health offers population intelligence that can empower hospitals to make decisions that reflect the true needs of their patients and ensure a high level of connection and engagement.

*Sources: CentraForce, LLC., SIMMONS Experian, Nielsen Scarborough MARS Healthcare Module & Alteryx. Copyright 2016, CentraForce, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

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