GUEST POST from Arlen Meyers
Would displaying the calorie count of menu items make you eat healthier food? Does weighing yourself every day make you lose weight? Does having a Fitbit or pedometer make you exercise more? The answer is probably no, but, that does not necessarily mean we should throw the baby out with the bathwater, According to some, there are some tactics that can help data motivate people to change
- Finding our what data matters to a particular person.
- Using peer pressure when sharing and comparing data
- Displaying the data in a format. time and place that is more impactful to a person than another way
- Timing the delivery of the data e.g. at the point of care via EMRs
- The proper use of warnings and alerts that don’t create alarm fatigue
- Personalized carrots and sticks that link the data to incentives or disincentives to change
- Finding people who have the most pain and are willing to change to nudge them over the edge
- Behavioral economic techniques e .g. gamification.
- Linking data to emotional triggers driving change
- Using techniques to remove unconscious bias in making decisions
- Finding the right technologies, like infrared sensors in spigots,to monitoring hand washing before entering an ICU
- Spreading good habits and interfering with bad habits using social media to create social contagion.
- Clarifying the “why” change is necessary
- Creating a vision of the result of the “what if”
- Involving end users early in helping to design the change process
To move people you have to WATER the planted
- They have to be willing, preferably internally motivated
- They have to be able
- They have to have a trigger
- They have to have an expectancy of a reward
- They have to be reinforced so they don’t lapse back into bad behaviors.
Here are some more tips on how to break up with your bad habits.
Everyone knows that changing your own or someone else’s behavior is a Herculean task. Sick care data scientists and population health entrepreneurs driving the connected health movement will need a lot more tools than just displaying data to make a difference. Plus, achieving he quintuple aim will mean not just changing doctor and patient behavior, but also making sure that the new behavior translates into value.
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