Are you ready for this?… Behavior change…For your organization.

Posted on March 05, 2015 by Amos Adler Some of our MEMOTEXT programs personalize interventions based on what’s known as stages of change. Stage of change, or the transtheoretical model, is used to asses and prescribe appropriate information, motivation and guidance to move people towards behavior change. In plain English, are people ready to adopt healthier behaviors? The model states that there is generally only a small percentage of a population that is prepared to take action at any given time. We use this as one of our personalization models within our algorithms. Not only is this true for the patients we work with to guide towards adherence and behavior change; but guess what? It’s true of the healthcare world in the context of adopting innovation and digital health technologies. There is a lot of lip-service paid towards disruptive technology and innovation. Feel free to see my recent rant on this. But recently I have realized that “disruptive change” in healthcare can be a barrier to sales efforts in the space. So we have made it part of our responsibility at MEMOTEXT to show that disruptive technology can be disruptive without being too disruptive. Yes I know that’s a mouthful but what we see is that true disruption needs to seamlessly integrate into a fairly complex matrix of validation, clinical work-flow and business requirements. I believe that the marketplace is genuinely interested in change and technology adoption, but there is a general lack of framework for innovation adoption. Let’s call it change management 101. I will get to this in yet another rant blog soon. Now back to the stage of change model. This time let’s apply stage of change to your organization in the innovation context… Where does your organization fit within your own innovation stage of change? For simplicity’s sake, let’s pretend the organization that needs to innovate as a patient who needs to quit eating Snickers bars in bed while watching Grey’s Anatomy.   Where is your team within this framework? Are they eating Snickers bars in bed while watching Grey’s Anatomy? Or are they watching it on a treadmill? Without a systemic framework to assess, pilot, integrate, and potentially commercialize innovative technologies in healthcare, innovation ends up informally assessed and adopted. The results are mixed and the process represents risk. Without formal thoughtful guidelines for assessment, agile measurement and ultimately integration the process ends up caught in a cycle of politics and informality, opposed to integrated into strategy. But adoption of change is a topic for next time. Till then…   AMOS ADLER M.Sc. FOUNDER & PRESIDENT Amos brings speech, mobile and social technologies together to create mobile (mHealth) and telehealth patient adherence programs. Since 2008, Amos has led the design and deployment of dozens of digital patient adherence and behavior change programs globally while advocating for evidence-based approaches to technology-based behavior change. With a background in user oriented design methodologies, user-requirements elicitation, finance and enterprise scale technology deployment, Amos focuses on solutions solving real-world business requirements with patient centered designs while understanding the challenges of change management in clinical settings. Prior to founding MEMOTEXT, Amos held multiple technology and finance related positions within the Bell Canada Holdings family of companies as well as a background in social and private real estate development. Amos holds a M.Sc. in Analysis, Design and Management of Information Systems from The London School of Economics in London England, graduating with distinction was highlighted by his work within the launch of the world’s first independent exchange for international wholesale telecom capacity. Amos speaks regularly at events such as: mHealth, Stanford Mobile Health, Health Datapalooza, Genentech FutureMed2.0 and has guest lectured at the Univ. of Toronto