Leah Sparks Discusses Patient Engagement With Mobile Health Technology

As mobile health advances help engage patients as active partners in their healthcare, these technologies can potentially harness that engagement and connect them with interventions, said Leah Sparks, co-founder and CEO of Wildflower Health.

Transcript (slightly modified)

What do you see in the future of mHealth?

That’s a great question a lot of people are asking, and I think there’s a lot of opportunity in the market. mHealth is already being deployed with consumers to track all of these data signals related to their health, but all of that, much of that data still living very much in the consumer realm. And where I think the opportunities are right now, are to bring that further into the healthcare system and really help unleash that data for providers and payers and put it in context, so the consumer can really partner with the healthcare system to use all that data to really make differences in their health.

How do you think mHealth technology will increase patient engagement?

Well, I think it already is increasing patient engagement. I think there are already a lot of studies and data points, even if they’re anecdotal at this point, that show that as people are tracking things and using devices and using mobile apps for their health, they are more engaged around it personally. Again, I think the next leap forward needs to be, it’s taking that engagement and harnessing it in a way that’s evidence-based and helps them connect with evidence-based interventions, again, with their provider or other clinical services.