Health care organizations are making strides toward greater patient engagement but hurdles still remain in the way of broad adoption, according to a new Chilmark Research report. The report profiled 14 market-leading vendors in the patient engagement market.

The report found that there is a large gap in adoption - some organizations still haven't adopted the basic patient portals and others are on their way to implementing advanced, "smart" tools. Yet the industry is demanding these advanced tools as it moves toward federal incentives, including the Meaningful Use program, and shifts to value-based reimbursement.

Health care organizations are well-aware of what technologies they should be adopting but they are burdened right now with the effects of health care reform, Naveen Rao, author of the report, told DOTmed News. "Given all the changes happening, patient engagement is toward the back end of the priority list," he added.
The large academic hospitals are the ones leading adoption now but Rao said that the smaller hospitals will catch up in about 18 to 24 months. The larger hospitals are ahead because they aren't reliant on the vendors, since they have the resources and experience to test the technology on their own.

The report also found that the bigger vendors are reactive rather than proactive to their customers' patient engagement needs. The problem is that the vendors believe there is no demand for advanced tools and the customers are waiting on the vendors to show them the path forward.

Start-ups and smaller companies are the ones developing the innovation products including mobile apps, cloud-based care plans and remote-monitoring plans.

Rao expected to see a lot of the bigger vendors acquire the smaller start-ups in the next few years. "Some of the smarter tools out there are probably going to be gobbled up by these bigger players so they have that technology to roll out to their customers," he said.

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