The Persuasive Health Record

By Nikolai Kirienko, UC Berkeley, Crohnology.MD Project Director

Read all Crohnology.MD blog posts

A personal health record needs to be persuasive in multiple dimensions at once: doctors need to trust it, and patients need to use it. So, as designers and researchers of systems that intend to promote health related actions, we have to master the dynamics of computers and persuasion if we want to build a truly meaningful personal health application. Thankfully, Prof. BJ Fogg, who directs the Persuasive Computing Lab on another influential Bay Area campus, has coined a term, and in fact an entire field of study to help sort it all out: Captology, or 'the study of computers as persuasive technologies'.   

According to Prof. Fogg, "We don't adopt our smartphones; we marry them." So, what does that say about the apps we use? If a health-care app doesn't want to be a casual fling, at least in my experience, it has to live up to a similar standard of domestic co-habitation: we have to want to live together. And that means seeing (and trusting) each other almost every day, and enjoying it. Suffice to say, I'm still looking for (and now trying to build) that ideal app.

As a result, in defining the core ODL's for Crohnology.MD, our team has encountered some interesting questions regarding the role of persuasion. When viewing our initial list of observations through the lens of a 'patient narrative', (the story you share about your illness) it became apparent that the names of the ODL's themselves may in fact have an unintended persuasive effect. For example, the name for a widely used observation measuring energy captures a 'Tiredness & Fatigue’ score on a scale of one through ten. I wondered what might happen to the scores (and perhaps the stories) if we framed the exact same question around ratings of 'Energy & Strength'?  

While these may seem like subtle details at first glance the persuasive tone they set shouldn't be underestimated. For those living with chronic illness our attitude and focus are often among the most powerful healing forces still under our control. In my estimation, the personal health apps that 'get' (and nurture) that relationship will in all likelihood be the ones that patients and doctors truly enjoy interacting with the most. And those are the apps we'll keep sharing our personal and professional lives with, in sickness and in health.  

What do you think? When it comes to frequent observations, how important is a name?

Comments

[Kathy Kim]

Interesting point Nikolai. I had that concern as we worked on naming one of our ODLs: "social isolation" vs "social integration." In the end, thanks to one of our 20-something grad students, we named it "socializing."