10 needs to answer: what patients want today

New challenges to be met

What do patients want? With the long-term trends for patient empowerment and greater access to information, the answers are changing. Yet get it right and you can not only improve patient outcomes with new kinds of services but build excellent relationships with HCPs too by showing increased value.

Here are 10 patient needs to consider:
 
1 Credible information : There are now huge resources available online. The challenge for patients is to sort the credible and up-to-date information from the unclear, misleading or false.
 
2 More say in treatment: Patients, especially younger ones, are demanding more involvement in treatment decisions. They want to fully understand their condition and the long-term care plan.
 
3 Product support: Patients want more than an in-pack leaflet. There is a role for industry to ‘help doctors help patients’ by providing services that go beyond the treatment itself.
 
4 Personalised information: On-demand, real-time and ‘just-for-you’ experiences are the new normal. The same quality of communication is increasingly expected of healthcare too.
 
5 Direct contact with HCPs: While patients are looking elsewhere for information, face-to-face engagement with healthcare professionals remains the priority – and why the focus is on high-quality interactions.
 
6 Well-informed HCPs: Empowered patients require not only good information sources but expect healthcare professionals informed on the latest data to enable a real and deep discussion.
 
7 Motivation support: People don't want novelty for novelty’s sake but there is interest in motivation assistance with treatment – either though good communication or new kinds of approaches like gamification.
 
8 On-demand knowledge: Increasingly there is a need to differentiate between the kind of information that is delivered in the consulting room and that which is available subsequently.
 
9 Family involvement: Many patients desire to keep their family informed about their condition, educated on its treatment and empowered to help as required.
 
10 Better health: Fundamentally people just want to get well. The trend for patient empowerment is actually a clear demonstration of this, being an attempt to take more control over treatment and get the best possible outcome.

How technology can enable you to respond

Read Agnitio’s mini-report – ‘6 things that patients want’ – that explores how technology enables you to better respond to today’s patient needs.