From stem-cell replacement to laser-treatment operations, advances in tech have proven to play a vital role in producing better health outcomes. But such outcomes heavily rely on the human side of the equation that, until now, tech hasn’t been able to crack: the patient’s decision-making process. With all the breakthrough tools and skilled doctors at our disposal, actually acting on a recommended course of action, whether a needle jab or an operation, lies entirely in the patient’s hands.
And alongside inflated operational costs, a patient’s nonadherence in health behavior, such as refusal of treatment plays a deceptively significant role in health outcomes today. Those who experience good communications and have their personal concerns understood are more likely to adhere to health recommendations, research by the Institute for Healthcare Communications shows. Of course, beyond the macro outcomes for entire populations, not acting upon certain recommended health behaviors has a detrimental effect on individuals themselves, too.
None have recognized this more than MedOrion, which recently unveiled the industry’s first AI-based Health-Behavior-Management (HBM) platform. Based in Tel Aviv, the company’s core mission, through innovating the patient journey, is to guide health plans’ members toward better health decisions.
Using artificial intelligence, MedOrion’s HBM platform moves beyond the traditional engagements existing systems health organizations currently use toward a focus on real, long-term behavioral change. The company’s system analyzes each members’ claims, as well as clinical and demographic information, to create insights into members’ concerns regarding a variety of measures, including medications, vaccines and cancer screening.
One of the company’s early successes was working to increase HPV vaccination rates among 14-year-old children in a large HMO composed of more than 2.5 million members. By addressing each parent’s health decision barrier when it came to vaccinating their adolescents, it was able to see a 6-12% increase in vaccination uptake. And after winning Pfizer’s Vaccines Global Innovation Challenge, which was launched to find innovative approaches that address both patient education and access to vaccination, MedOrion’s potential to affect better healthcare outcomes has seriously begun turning heads in the industry.
Today’s approaches have so far relied on the probability that an individual would be motivated by a certain message. Instead, by understanding a health member’s barriers to adherence, MedOrion turns the focus and asks why, for example, someone is not adhering to their medication. Is it because of side effects, cost concerns? Or perhaps underestimating how much it could help?
Understanding individual member’s real-world concerns like these, in turn, empowers health providers to provide real-life actionable insight towards affecting positive health-related decisions. The company’s predictive behavior model can then personalize member communications across all active channels, with each unique member dataset containing engagement habits, insights from digital interaction and clinical history.
From its findings, MedOrion states that its HBM platform, by enabling health plans to create an end-to-end and nonabrasive member experience from day one, yields providers a 20% rise in yearly revenues, with member engagement also 30% less than existing solutions.
But perhaps more importantly, one of the more heartwarming effects of MedOrion’s mission is in seeing, as Adi Jacobson, marketing vice-president at MedOrion puts it, “the transformational journey health plan members undergo, who respond profoundly to having their concerns understood and addressed.”
Simply by learning to “see” people through the perspective of behavioral science and inserting the “why” into healthcare, MedOrion has unearthed a fascinating new frontier for healthcare to affect better outcomes. And with global recognized entities like Pfizer giving its stamp of approval, it’s only a matter of time before others in the health space latch on.