2 ways to overcome the adoption challenge of health innovations

Without widespread adoption, these technologies fail to have a significant impact on patients' health and well-being so overcoming the adoption challenge is essential for the successful implementation of health innovations. 

facilitating adoption by behavioral design 

In recent years our design team has been helping healthcare experts turn their vision of the future into products that change lives. Having worked on solutions introducing radical changes in one’s health regime, we identified two large areas where the healthcare industry could innovate around digital products to engage with patients on a large scale and influence their behavior for better health and better life.

One area is harnessing the capabilities of digital tools that are already widely available in the hands of the population, like wearables, smartphones, and IoT devices for monitoring and early prevention. This means screening users’ health conditions and detecting signs of possible illness early on when successful treatment is still possible or even before these conditions develop.

The other area uses digital products as medical or lifestyle intervention tools. Helping patients take the right actions, change their unhealthy behaviors, follow their treatment plan, improve medication adherence, or switch to healthier habits.

The success of both areas relies highly on the actual patients using and adopting these solutions to their everyday lives and building them into their daily routines.

A person can have an app on their smartphone that is capable of spotting early signs of skin cancer with high accuracy, but it won’t help unless the screening is done with the required frequency. Similarly, one might get great advice from their doctor on what diet to follow. Still, ultimately the success of the intervention will be dependent on the person being able (and willing) to adopt these changes to their everyday routine.

In our report, we summarise two approaches to overcome the adoption problem, that can help healthcare innovators develop digital tools that are actually used by patients and successfully adopted to people’s daily lives.

1. passive undisruptive adoption: does not require any effort from the user side
2. active, habit-building adoption: requires users to modify their routines. 

However, habits are notoriously difficult to change because they are so deeply routed in our everyday life. To conquer this challenge, we have developed the Behaviour Design Canvas based on scientific research and digital best practices on habit change. This guiding tool helps innovators design solutions in the digital space that facilitate positive behavior change.

Do you want to learn more about how healthcare innovators can develop digital products to facilitate positive behavior change?