JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Health organizations and patients interact over different communication channels and are harnessing digital communications for this purpose. The objectives of this retrospective study are to assist a medical organization in improving and adapting, the patient-healthcare practitioners' communication channels. Enhancing communication involves improving patient access to healthcare professionals by expanding the existing capabilities and introducing new ones.

Objective:

The aims of this retrospective data study are to assist healthcare policy makers to improve and personalize the communication between patients and health care professionals by expanding the capabilities of current communication channels and introducing new ones. One hypothesis is that the patient’s follow-up and clinical outcomes are influenced by the patient’s preferred channels of communication with the healthcare organization; another hypothesis is that the adoption of newly introduced communication channels between the patient and the healthcare organization is influenced by the patient’s socio-demographic and clinical profile; further, the introduction of a new communication channel influences the usage of existing communication channels.

Methods:

This data-based study analyzes information stored in electronic medical records and in logs documenting access to various communication channels between patients and a health organization (Clalit Health Services). The analyzed information was extracted from a Datawarehouse and includes data collected between 2008 and 2016. The patients included were diagnosed with diabetes, aged 21 years and over, members of Clalit at least since 2007 and were still alive in 2016. The study analyzed 311,168 patients with diabetes. The analysis consisted of characterizing the usage profiles of traditional and novel communication channels overtime, considering that over this period methods by which patients contact healthcare professionals were added and changed. We, firstly, identified a few communication profiles of patients in 2016. We used a clustering for discretization purposes and patients’ profiles building, a hierarchical clustering algorithm and heatmaps for generating a visualization of the different communication profiles. Then the clusters were arranged by communication profiles in a hierarchical order to compare between the various communication profiles.

Results:

We identified and characterized 13 profiles of patients. We have shown how communication behavior is influenced by the means of communication that the health organization provides to the patient. We observed how different patients respond differently to technological means of communication and change, or not, their communication patterns with the healthcare organization based on the communication channels available to them.

Conclusions:

Identifying the channel of communication with the health organization and its healthcare professionals, which is preferred by each patient, creates an opportunity to convey messages adapted to the patient in the most appropriate communication channel. The greater the likelihood that the therapeutic message will be received by the patient, the greater the patient's response and proactiveness to the treatment, and the better the health of the patient.