HealthCrowd Promotes Patient Engagement Through Messaging

Article Excerpt: The recent Pew Internet Project study reported that only 9 percent of American adults use texting to get health updates, although 80 percent use text messaging.  As app adoption stagnates, some start-ups, like California-based HealthCrowd, are shifting their focus to mobile messaging, including text messaging, rather than apps, as the future of patient engagement.  HealthCrowd sells health-related messaging systems to health plans and care providers, which can use them for communications & outreach, chronic disease management, discharge follow-up, and behavioral health support.  For instance, one HealthCrowd intervention for recovering alcoholics involved texting a person’s friends to remind them to congratulate him on a “sobriety birthday.”