A Buyer’s Guide to Patient Education
Patient education is a critical aspect of the modern care delivery experience and when leveraged appropriately, can positively impact every part of the care continuum. Read our comprehensive guide to learn the key components of digital education and what to look for when choosing a solution for your health system.
What is patient education?
Patient education is the ability to supply tailored health education content to the patient throughout the care continuum. Robust patient education offerings provide benefits such as better care plan adherence, improved outcomes, and higher patient satisfaction scores. The leading digital solutions automate the process, delivering condition-specific health education to patients at the right time and place in their care journey.
Ongoing self-service patient education is accessible on demand anywhere, at any time, and can range from web-based health libraries to personalized content on mobile apps. Full-service patient education solutions fulfill two key roles:
Content curators that create educational content or source clinically validated material from third-parties.
Content aggregators that deliver educational materials and engagement opportunities to patients and consumers.
“We've seen a shift in the market away from solutions that focus solely on content creation and toward solutions that function as content delivery mechanisms. It's important for health systems to understand whether they need more engaging and personalized content, a delivery mechanism, or both. Purchasing decisions should be made within the context of the health system’s digital strategy so that a digital education solution doesn’t become just another siloed ‘thing’ that patients receive. Instead, it should be included as part of their broader care journey throughout the entire health system.”
— Marisa Furney,
AVIA Patient Education Expert
The case for personalized digital patient education
Best-in-class digital education goes beyond delivering relevant information at the right time and provides content that adjusts to accommodate the health needs of individual patients. Personalized education reflects medication regimens, comorbid conditions, health changes, demographic information, and support networks, and is delivered via a patient's preferred channels at the right time of day and in a format that is most accessible to them. Leading solutions continuously track how and when patients consume content to further fine-tune each individual care journey and effectively engage each patient.
When and where patient education is consumed
Pre-visit: Educational materials sent prior to visits to prepare patients and set expectations, typically transmitted via the patient portal or email. Formats may include written instructions, videos, infographics or illustrations. The health system typically initiates this one-time delivery..
Point of care: Educational materials delivered in the exam room or clinic in real time, including new or refresher content to ensure patient comprehension and retention. Patients commonly receive this information through interactive monitors, screens, or tablets.
Post-encounter: Diagnosis-specific and medically reviewed content delivered once or as part of an ongoing care plan. Materials are often sent via patient portal or email.
What leading patient education solutions offer
Accurate and relevant content
Content is accurate and in the best interests of the patient with no commercial bias, is continuously updated to reflect the latest studies and findings so patients can feel confident in their decision making, and is relevant to the patient’s immediate needs.
Records historical context
Leading patient education solutions automatically note when patients receive materials and gauge their comprehension and engagement. Clinicians can avoid repeatedly sending the same information and leverage tracking data to reinforce critical messages and support care plan adherence.
Interactive and multimodal interfaces
Education should be delivered through a variety of formats (e.g., print, video, or audio) and modalities (e.g., websites or mobile apps) to capture patient attention and improve their comprehension. Engaging and user-friendly interfaces, like drag-and-drop functionalities, can help patients visualize their medical conditions and find materials around topics that are relevant to them. In-the-moment reminders through augmented reality encourage patients to make health-conscious choices and changes.
Guided and personalized care journeys
With condition-specific journeys or pathways, providers are better equipped to guide patients through the next steps in their care plans and provide targeted interventions when appropriate. Personalized materials empower patients with information about risks and benefits of different treatment options so they can form their own preferences and share in the decision-making process.
Easy-to-understand materials
Leading solutions can tailor content to patient comprehension and health literacy, and pair straightforward text with medical illustrations to simplify concepts and maximize understanding. With software design that applies current health literacy principles, patient education solutions can help clarify diagnoses, support shared decision-making, and build trust between patients and providers. Multilingual functionality is key to supporting patients in their preferred languages.
Integrates with care team workflows
Automated patient education should minimize the care team workload and incorporate into existing workflows with functionality like content suggestions based on patient health history, tagged favorites and folder access. Educational content should be quickly accessible and displayed alongside contextual data that shows care managers how other members of the team assigned them. Relevant health data must be accessible in real time to help care managers prepare for calls, use during encounters, or send as part of follow-up.
Integrates with the EHR
Current solutions refer to patient medical records, diagnoses, visit history, and the current clinical encounter to provide personalized, condition-specific content that can be shared through the patient portal at any time. A good solution supports a mix of traditional and custom orders and results interfaces, with integrations that include (but are not limited to) Health Level Seven.
Organizing for patient education success in your health system
Prior to choosing a vendor and potentially adopting a different approach to patient education, health systems should:
Establish their clinical objectives to ensure that a new solution aligns with their goals
Assess the strengths and weaknesses of any current patient education offerings
Consider how digital education fits into the context of their broader digital strategy and how a solution could add value for patients at multiple touch points throughout the health system
Identify the central functions that a new solution should offer–patient engagement and personalized care journeys, a content delivery mechanism, or both
Get buy-in from clinicians and staff
Upgrade technical infrastructure and hardware where appropriate
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