Health care practitioners and payer organizations increasingly use big data to overcome what might be called a “flaw of averages” in traditional medicine: a treatment that has been tested at a population level might in fact work better for some individuals than others. The goal of precision medicine is therefore to identify treatments appropriate to an individual — rather than a population — based on granular genotype and phenotype data from his or her medical records. The individual data-driven nature of such treatment protocols improves the odds that a specific treatment will work for a specific patient.
Using Behavioral Nudges to Treat Diabetes
You need to know what motivates each patient.
October 10, 2018
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Summary.
Issues of adherence to treatment have been acknowledged and studied for years, but only recently have techniques derived from behavioral science been used to actually improve patient follow-through. Researchers are now exploring whether data-driven precision medicine can also incorporate precision behavioral nudges that improve patient willingness to follow clinicians’ recommendations by offering highly tailored choices within an incentive scheme designed to address each patient’s specific motivational profile.