Will there come a day when the prescribing of mHealth could augment that of traditional medicine?
It’s exciting to consider the possibility that mHealth e-prescribing may prove more useful in changing patient behavior than the modern day physician “plan” that comes at the end of every SOAP note.
Here's why.
As a pediatrician, I use a fabulous patient health record that essentially mirrors my notes exactly. It is complete: Patients can log in remotely and see the entire note - everything we decided in the plan we were going to accomplish between visits.
Fine, great, another check off the meaningful use list.
More promising than a PHR
The PHR is, of course, better than nothing, and it can be used to help energize patients and trigger motivation to change behaviors that ultimately improve outcomes.
But even if the PHR is viewable on a mobile device, it doesn't do much to help the user during the course of the day when making these continual little “microdecisions,” such as where to put the car in the parking lot or whether to take an elevator or the stairs.
Indeed, the mHealth prescription is inherently better because it creates activation, engagement and behavior change over the continuum of time between visits.
By mHealth Rx, I mean the interjection of the appropriate mobile behavior change that is customized to a particular patient’s needs. An mHealth Rx uses social, gamification and rewards strategies of the mobile consumer Internet to meet core motivation factors necessary for successful behavior change.
Text messaging is one aspect; biometric assessment and interpretation at home is another. To succeed, however, features must be customizable both in content and temporally so as to be meaningful to the patient.
Doctors needed, too
It’s not just about patients and technology, of course.
The hope is that over time, physicians will gravitate their recommendations toward prescribing "prevention management " techniques and away from pharmaceutical prescribing - thereby creating a prolonged delay in our patients' most certain march toward lifestyle disease. Or an indefinite reprieve.
But what do you think? Can mHealth-based prevention management work?
Brandi Harless is CEO and Natalie Hodge, MD, is chief medical officer of Personal Medicine Plus.
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