Kaiser’s patient-centric mobile app opens many doors

Since late January, healthcare and technology media outlets have been deluged with talk of Kaiser’s recent release of its newest mobile health application. The application, which is a mobile version of Kaiser’s online-based My Health Manager patient portal, allows patients to view medical records, review lab results, and schedule appointments.

Kaiser has already experienced considerable success in engaging patients through online means. If properly leveraged, Ovum believes the mobile app could help to further deepen patient engagement and lead to a litany of additional benefits for all stakeholders involved. Because Kaiser is one of the largest managed-care organizations in the US, others are likely to take note and respond with similar solutions. Ovum suggests that because the mobile health space is new and full of both identified and unidentified challenges and potential pitfalls, all healthcare organizations should tread carefully and proceed wisely.

Kaiser’s medical records mobile app could benefit all stakeholders

Kaiser’s newest medical records mobile app is not the its first foray into the patient-centric mobile-health space. In 2008, Kaiser provided a select group of patients with SMS-based appointment and treatment reminders, and in July 2011, it released the KP Locator, a mobile app designed to help patients easily locate physician offices. While these first apps certainly benefited patients, the capabilities and features of the January 2012 health record app are more robust and promising because not only does it offer patients the ability to view their medical records, it also allows them to perform a range of tasks, including scheduling appointments and refilling prescriptions. 

Ovum believes the My Health Manager mobile app has the potential to benefit all stakeholders. Not only will patients have access to important healthcare data, but also they will become more engaged in healthcare decision-making and become better able to make their data more actionable. Interactive tools such as reminders and appointment-scheduling will prompt and encourage patients to interface with the mobile app again and again. The app’s quick access to lab results and easy prescription refilling processes will make adoption and continued use more likely. Moreover, additional channels of patient-provider and patient-payer communication will be opened, helping to enhance relationships and collaboration and to promote an environment where all stakeholders feel more invested in patient care. Providers can also take comfort in knowing that patients are better aware of relevant diagnoses, laboratory results, and treatments. The My Health Manager help will alleviate some of the provider’s administrative burden, particularly by automating the appointment-scheduling process. Kaiser itself also stands to gain a great deal from successful adoption. Conventional wisdom suggests that healthcare IT has the power to significantly reduce costs while simultaneously enhancing the quality of care. In an environment where payers are continuously under pressure to accomplish these very goals, mobile health applications such as My Health Manager will certainly help.

The recent release of Kaiser’s mobile health app is just the beginning

Executives at Kaiser have publicly identified the deployment of the My Health Manger app to be only an initial step in a much large mobile health strategy. Ovum believes there is value in Kaiser expanding its repertoire. There are many types of patient-centered mobile apps, such as disease-management solutions, that could deliver value to both Kaiser and its patients. However, before expanding further, Ovum suggests that Kaiser should take its time to not only work out the inevitable usage and technology kinks it will experience with Mobile Health Manger, but also to gauge patient response. Kaiser has a patient population of nearly 9 million scattered throughout the US. Such a large and highly diverse population will present challenges, some of which will be region-specific, to which Kaiser must give significant consideration. Kaiser is in a good position to learn a great deal about how patients use mobile health apps and to utilize this knowledge to create better mobile health solutions. For Kaiser, patience will be a virtue and if it is pursued, success will follow.

Other payers will follow Kaiser’s lead, but should do so cautiously

Many payers and providers look to Kaiser as a beacon and expect it to lead the way in producing innovative ways to topple and confront healthcare’s most deleterious issues. For this reason, Ovum expects that for many payers, Kaiser’s app will serve as a model for emulation. Payers will begin to follow suit and either leverage existing third-party apps or create their own. While Ovum believes it is important and worthwhile to engage patients through mobile mediums, we recommend that payers and other organizations that consider using mobile health applications do so gingerly. The world of mobile health is a new one, full of uncertainty and obstacles, and general disinclination on the part of patients to use these solutions will be one of the most prominent obstacles. Payers will experience an uphill battle in encouraging patients to become adopters. If not astutely implemented and managed, the deployment of mobile health applications among patient populations could have less than stellar results and below-expected usage rates.