Ten years ago, one of the biggest healthcare buzzwords was “engagement.” Employers and health plans were challenged to create awareness of their wellness programs to drive employee engagement and participation. Today the average engagement rates have skyrocketed from around 15 percent to 50 percent, or more.
Now that many covered populations are engaged and both health plans and employers have current data about employee health, this data must be effectively leveraged to create better outcomes and to impact costs. The new healthcare challenge is not just engagement, but interoperability.
The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) defines interoperability as the extent to which systems and devices can exchange and interpret data. Interoperability is important in many industries. In healthcare, where lives are at stake, the challenge is not just moving data, but moving people too. To help people successfully navigate healthcare systems to achieve the desired outcomes, patient data must move in tandem with patient experiences.
This vision has become progressively more difficult to realize as the volume, variety, and velocity of health-related data increases. Record-breaking numbers of people are engaged in population health programs. Many of them participate in biometric screenings and use wearable devices. In 2016, more of the data produced by wearable devices will be integrated with clinical systems, which creates more insight into patient health.
One common theme across these disparate systems is health measurement. This is the foundation upon which BioIQ is built and it becomes more important with each passing year. It’s no wonder health measurement is the biggest medical activity in the U.S., with more than 13 billion tests performed annually. What’s more – approximately 70 percent of medical decisions rely on results from these tests.
BioIQ will continue to emphasize engagement, with the knowledge that engaging members is only the first step. Population health programs must include accurate measurement tools and interventions if they are to enable people to improve health outcomes and successfully navigate healthcare processes.
Tune in to this year’s Top Wellness and Population Health Trends webinar to learn about these and other trends that will disrupt population health in 2016 – and beyond.