‘It’s all about me’: how to personalise healthcare

Health systems are at an important crossroads. Access to health information and revolutionary medical discoveries are together generating grassroots demand for personalised healthcare. Personalisation in the traditional sense means individuals are able to seek healthcare services and treatment tailored to meet their unique health goals and challenges.

‘A consumer-driven health system is emerging, within which people select resources to personalise their healthcare’

Personalisation can also be considered through a population based lens, where health systems strive to achieve value for the populations they serve, focused on health, wellness and quality of life.

Our research explores current trends that enable personalisation, demonstrates how it has been successfully employed in other industries, and proposes 10 steps to accelerate the development of personalised health systems.

The empowered consumer

A consumer driven health system is emerging, within which people select and engage online tools, technologies and resources to personalise their healthcare to achieve health and wellness that is tailored to the values and goals of each individual.

This is evidenced by the explosion of more than 97,000 mobile health apps worldwide, used primarily for self-management of personal health and wellness goals and connectively to peer to peer health communities for information sharing outside of the traditional provider-patient paradigm.

Personalisation in industry

While personalisation may be a relatively new concept for health systems, it is frequently used by industry to achieve a competitive advantage. As examples, Disney and Amazon use consumer preferences to personalise and strengthen customer experiences and gain valuable customer analytics.

In the banking industry, consumers use privacy protected online portals to access services tailored to individual preferences and risk thresholds. Health systems can apply similar techniques to personalise care for individuals and populations.

What does a personalised health system look like?

We have identified 10 steps health systems can take to personalise their services to achieve value for the populations they serve.

Step 1: Reframe the conversation on the person, not the disease. People judge their experience in healthcare by the way they are treated as a person, not by the way their disease is treated.

Step 2: Redefine success in terms of what matters to people. Define success in terms of the person’s health and wellness goals, not the diagnosis or prescription of the provider.

Step 3: Put the person in charge of decisions, not the provider.  A personalised system supports individuals, families, or communities in making decisions about their own health, and designs care strategies by providing the full spectrum of options and how they intersect along the lifecycle.

Step 4: Shift care processes from “one size fits all” to “one size fits one”. Current clinical protocols and processes must be augmented and personalised to the person’s lifestyle, values and personal health goals.

‘Democratise information to empower people to take charge of their health and wellness’

Step 5: Stop competing and start collaborating. Shift the incentives for providers to achieve short and long term outcomes, rather than services delivered. Outcomes encourage health professionals or health organisations to collaborate to determine the most efficient and effective strategy for achieving population outcomes.

Step 6: Join the 21st century and get connected. Put digital tools into the hands of all members of the healthcare team – including patients. In a personalised health system, digital technologies are used to better connect people to their healthcare team, enabling consumers to be active partners in managing their own health and wellness.

Step 7: Democratise information to empower people to take charge of their health and wellness. People need to be given access to their health information. When this occurs, they can make more informed decisions about their healthcare.

Step 8: Customise healthcare to the needs, expectations and values of the population. Different segments of the population have different needs and challenges when it comes to their health. Market segmentation defines the requirements and expectations of population sectors to enable personalisation of programs and services to reflect the unique needs and preferences to each sub-sector across populations.

‘Health systems are faced with the exciting and challenging need to transform current practices’

Step 9: Put the population in charge of defining value. Citizens need to define value for health systems and then collaborate to make the difficult decisions about what services are provided, and what outcomes the funding models will pay for.

Step 10: Measure what matters. Current metrics used to evaluate health systems need to be augmented and strengthened to include metrics that reflect value for individuals, communities and populations. This means including metrics that measure health and wellness goals, community health outcomes, and population wellness and quality of life to ensure health systems deliver value.

Health systems are faced with the exciting and challenging need to transform current practices and embrace new innovations to meet the shifting consumer demands for a personalised healthcare journey. Keeping these 10 steps in mind, health systems can begin to move towards a personalised health system, where for the consumer, it is “all about me”.

Charles Alessi is chair at the National Association of Primary Care; Anne Snowdon is professor and chair and Karin Schnarr is a research fellow at the International Centre for Health Innovation, Western University, Ontario