Digital health solutions ingest and generate enormous amounts of data. Some products, like Renalis Health’s chatbot CeCe Lite, facilitate an interactive experience. Others, like Theragen’s ActaStim-S, are wearable devices with connected apps that passively collect biometric data.
It’s easy for digital health solution creators to view the datasets these digital health products produce as simple tools for understanding user behavior. And it’s even easier to let this wealth of information waste away in the background.
Treating data as a core feature, however, can make iterating on the app easier and improve its functionality for users, ultimately extending the product’s lifecycle.
In this piece, I’ll look at how and why to design digital health products with data as a feature core to the user’s experience.
Data visualizations that show user progress incentivize adherence
App designers often think of data as an end. Sure, data can inform new features. And it may power user incentives (regularly buy ibuprofen at the pharmacy, and soon enough a coupon for ibuprofen will print out with your receipt).
But data can also function as a feature that incentivizes adherence to a digital health app.
The work TXI did for Theragen focused on a particularly complex issue. When post-surgical spinal fusion patients used Theragen’s product, ActaStim-S, to stimulate bone growth, data showed patients were quick to engage with the product. That offered good news for both providers and their patients.
Beyond being painful, post-operative recovery is often slow, with pain lessening a little at a time. And since humans have only a short-term memory of pain, patients tend to experience what hurts now rather than reflect on the benefits of slow progress.
Data helped us address this problem. TXI included a pain log in the mobile health app developed for use with the ActaStim-S. Using this log, patients tracked their pain over time through regular journal entries. That data was then displayed back to patients in graphs representing device adherence rates, activity levels, and pain experienced each day.
Putting data up front as a feature patients could see wasn’t just a means of incentivizing them to use ActaStim-S. Actively inputting their data also gave patients an opportunity to be invested in their care. And seeing that data displayed back to them offered patients a deeper understanding of their recovery process.
