Personalized Healthcare: Impact on Enhancing the Patient’s Health Journey

Healthcare has experienced significant growth in the realm of digital technology, driving innovation in patient care to align with the broader digital and technological transformation seen across society. As we look ahead, healthcare methodologies are poised to undergo internal shifts, leading to a fundamentally different customer interaction with healthcare providers. This shift aims to establish a more customer-centric and convenient approach to care delivery.

The advent of artificial intelligence and data-driven analytics has led various industries to gravitate towards personalization, as the outdated “one size fits all” approach becomes increasingly untenable. Healthcare is no exception to this trend.

Recent studies highlight that 72% of patients express a desire for enhanced personalized care, tailored to their distinct clinical requirements. This raises the question: what exactly constitutes personalized healthcare, and how does it influence the overall healthcare customer experience?

What is Personalized Healthcare?

The concept of personalized healthcare emerged in the early twenty-first century, illustrating how technological advancements can play a role in forecasting treatment responses, pinpointing health risks, and tracking the progression of diseases.

Referred to as personalized medicine or precision medicine, personalized healthcare represents a pioneering frontier that delves into the potential of data-driven predictions and deep customer engagement to foster collaborative and high-impact decision-making, ultimately leading to enhanced outcomes.

This innovative approach to healthcare integrates a patient’s medical history, advances in genomics, robust data analytics, diagnostic assessments, insights from population health, social determinants of individual care, and a tailored treatment plan.

Personalized medicine holds significant potential for ushering in transformative enhancements across the entire healthcare spectrum, elevating the quality of care and bolstering disease prevention efforts. As a result, it plays a pivotal role in delivering an exceptional customer experience within the realm of health services.

Five Approaches for Delivering Customized Health Services to Clients

Just as the customer lies at the core of every business, the same holds true for the healthcare industry. This principle underscores the objectives of medical personalization and personalized healthcare, both of which strive to cater to the distinct needs of each individual patient. Healthcare providers must grasp the following strategies to ensure a gratifying customer experience:

Comprehensive Customer Data Access

Delivering an exceptional personalized healthcare experience hinges on healthcare companies cultivating a profound comprehension of their patients. To attain such insight, accessing standardized patient data from throughout the organization is imperative.

Healthcare marketers collaborate with systems to elevate their marketing strategies by incorporating data from every touchpoint and interaction during the customer journey. During this process, it is crucial to ascertain data ownership and strategize on leveraging it optimally while respecting consumer consent.

In essence, adopting data-driven methodologies for healthcare personalization stands as a pivotal necessity for healthcare enterprises.

Streamlined Data Integration

Technology serves to enhance and tailor the customer experience. Amidst the investments poured into healthcare technology initiatives in recent years, the digital health landscape has become notably disjointed. Addressing this challenge requires a cohesive remedy, and a unified solution like a customer data platform can effectively weave together all internal technologies.

Embracing a versatile strategy for integrating technology safeguards the organization’s future, enabling seamless adoption of emerging technologies as it progresses in formulating innovative methods and solutions to enhance the customer experience.

Tailored Customization Metrics

Once customer data has been accessed and unified, the subsequent phase involves devising methods for scaling customized experiences. This challenge is pervasive throughout the healthcare sector, where the utilization and evaluation of data often deviate from initial intentions. Consequently, it becomes imperative to gauge outcomes, foster ongoing enhancement, and employ the most fitting tools and approaches.

Embrace the Patient’s Rhythm

The traditional linear and static nature of customer journeys has transformed into a variable and rapid-paced paradigm, demanding healthcare companies to proactively engage with patients across diverse channels, both online and offline, in real-time. This requires a more comprehensive and profound comprehension of clients’ requirements.

In today’s landscape, customers have become accustomed to elevated experiences, with heightened expectations driven by industry giants like Netflix and Amazon. Consequently, these expectations extend to healthcare, where patients anticipate personalized and pertinent care delivered through their preferred communication channels.

As a result, it is imperative for healthcare providers to adeptly grasp clients’ needs within the health sector and empathize with their challenges. This ensures the fulfillment of expectations and facilitates a parallel journey aligned with patients’ aspirations and desires.

Enhance Customer Experience Delivery

Contemporary consumers prioritize swift and evident value, and healthcare institutions must grasp and actively address this demand. The customer’s concern lies in the outcome rather than the organizational challenges, as they gravitate towards providers offering a superior experience compared to competitors.

In the midst of intense competition, healthcare enterprises must strive for an enhanced customer experience. This entails not only delivering exceptional service but also highlighting and showcasing this excellence to customers, ensuring their contentment and long-term loyalty.

The Significance of Patient Engagement Data for Tailored Healthcare Experiences

Customer engagement data encompasses a comprehensive record of customer behaviors and interactions, spanning both offline and digital channels. These channels include websites, mobile apps, IoT devices, and more. Leveraging this wealth of data contributes to the enhancement of customer service.

The healthcare domain is intertwined with an array of data sources, ranging from advancements in remote patient monitoring to innovations like glucose and heart rate tracking, swallowable sensors, and beyond.

Alongside sophisticated medical IoT devices, everyday consumers utilize smartwatches and mobile phones as personal health tools. These devices enable them to monitor heart rates, track activity levels, and even measure blood oxygen levels. The healthcare landscape is further enriched by telemedicine, virtual visits, a multitude of traditional healthcare providers, and various healthcare platforms.

The sheer volume of available data can be overwhelming for healthcare providers. This is where the significance of a customer data platform for healthcare becomes apparent.

By harnessing the extensive pool of patient history and information, healthcare providers can efficiently discern the next steps in patient care. This capability aligns with the longstanding expectations of customers throughout history.

Personalized Healthcare Return of Investment

Personalized healthcare has played a pivotal role in shaping and enhancing the customer experience, while also leading to a twofold increase in profits for health sector brands. The benefits of this approach include:

Amplifying customer (patient) and healthcare provider loyalty.
Cultivating a recurring cycle of engagement and interaction.
Elevating the relevance of advertisements for the target audience.
Gaining insights into when to discontinue investment in ineffective campaigns.
Enhancing lead nurturing strategies.
Unlocking the potential for optimized sales and mutual gain.
Tailoring offerings precisely to customers’ needs.
Providing community resources based on individual requirements.

By cultivating a comprehensive customer perspective supported by a robust technological infrastructure and reliable data, healthcare organizations can develop, test, and refine customer experiences to elevate overall value.

Personalizing Healthcare with Lucidya

The expansion of data is intricately tied to the surge in telehealth, which experienced rapid growth during the COVID-19 pandemic and is poised to become a permanent fixture in modern healthcare. A staggering 70% of healthcare providers express a desire to continue offering telehealth services, with a significant portion highlighting its positive impact on delivering enhanced care.

The evolution of digital healthcare yields a wealth of data, facilitating an enriched and personalized experience. To effectively keep pace with advancements and enhance customer experiences within the healthcare sector, periodic data acquisition is essential. This is where tools provided by Lucidya come into play, including:

Lucidya Omnichannel
Lucidya Social Listening
Lucidya CDP

Conclusion

Technology and artificial intelligence have significantly advanced the monitoring and aggregation of customer data within the healthcare sector on a grand scale. This has had a direct and profound impact on the customer experience, particularly in the realm of personalized healthcare. This elevation of the customer experience has propelled the health sector to new heights, with a paramount focus on enhancing customer satisfaction and retention.