By Clive Flashman

Following on from my last blog (Persuading the Unpersuadables) I’d like to discuss influencing patients’ behaviour from a slightly different perspective.

It has proven incredibly difficult in the past to move patients up the engagement curve (from engaged, to empowered, to activated). This is because it generally requires a behaviour change on their part, and often on the part of the clinician too (a whole separate series of blogs!).

People require motivation to change, but what will motivate them, and when should it be done.

BJ Fogg (a computer scientist who specialises in persuasive technologies) designed a motivation wave which shows the points of high motivation, or put another way, small windows of opportunity to change people’s behaviour.

The challenge then becomes – how do you know when the individual has reached one of these tipping points?

In my view, it’s all about context, getting to know as much about the healthcare consumer as possible in order to personalise all interactions with them. The data to drive contextual knowledge can be digitally sourced from apps like facebook, twitter, waze, Instagram, etc.

What factors would suggest that a person might be at a sufficiently changeable state of mind that they might be influenced to change their behaviour?

These could include mood, location, the people they are with, the activities they are engaged in, the activities they have just finished, current health, predicted health, and probably many more.

People are inherently suspicious when apps try to read data from other apps to know more about them, but ultimately, the better an app knows you, the more likely it is to be able to deliver information/ services that you really want.