Thomas Morrow, MD

Patient behavior is perhaps the final frontier to concur in our quest of making our population healthier. But, how can we change the health behavior of nearly 200,000,000 Americans? A SXSW panel discussed some individual approaches using innovative technology.

Hospitals are facing hundreds of millions in penalties for readmissions, and they are trying coding gimmicks to avoid these. Instead, it's time send a nurse home with every discharge.

The estimated cost per quality-adjusted life year for the PCSK9 drugs is $300,000. How should health plans respond?

The PCSK9 drugs are stirring up a lot of attention, primarily around how to restrict access. But, no one is talking about how to best manage the patient's needs.

Addiction is a national scourge. Cognitive Technologies are needed to deal with this very expensive illness.

A rheumatoid arthritis—focused Virtual Health Assistant (aka avatar) could help save US health plans over $1 billion per year by providing the data needed to pursue an evidence-based dose reduction/discontinuation strategy for biologic DMARDs (bDMARDs). The science is strong, but is the will equally strong?

Current adherence measures rely on lots of human interaction-something that is not scalable given the need. Avatars will become the norm in the near future.

Another 2 companies that are using natural language processing and artificial intelligence in their efforts on direct-to-person health coaching.

Although there are numerous companies providing natural language processing services, there are only a handful that are focusing their efforts on direct-to-person coaching. Here are 2 companies who chose to submit a review of their agents and their capabilities.

Advanced technology is now available to not only monitor patients at home but also to incorporate a myriad of data sources into intelligent engagement platforms. The Virtual Health Assistant will become the brain of the Intelligent Engagement Plecosystem

Packaging by itself is an adherence technology and will revolutionize data collection on adherence, but the future will find this technology part of the greater plecosystem using a virtual health assistant as the "air traffic controller.

Intelligent Engagement, through the use of virtual health assistants in conjunction with a variety of adherence technologies hold the promise to create an overall strategy for an intelligent adherence plecosystem.

Adherence is a very complex issue. Numerous theories have been developed and they must be integrated into any approach to solve our healthcare problems. Only Intelligent Engagement can incorporate a variety of these theories into a plecosystem of adherence technologies.

Behavior, including adherence behavior, are the keys to improving outcome in a variety of diseases. We must rethink our adherence strategy by using Intelligent Engagement to control the plecosystem of adherence technologies.