Person centred care in a digital product - Habit Health

SECTOR UPDATE - Habit Health, Mark Shirley, Chief Innovation Officer

habithealth+ has passed 19,000 downloads, and we have recently released the second version, built with our development partner Intervengine.

The idea behind the app is connected care. Recovery does not happen in isolated appointments. It happens over weeks and months, in the gaps between sessions, in the small decisions people make when nobody is watching. habithealth+ gives people a way to stay connected to their recovery and the support around it, and gives clinicians a clearer view of progress over time rather than a snapshot taken in a twenty-minute consultation.

It is free for anyone in New Zealand to use.

The main addition in our second version is a daily self-check, using a built-in WHO-5. It takes under a minute. It gives people a simple way to see how they are travelling, and brings that picture into the room at the next appointment.

Based on how someone answers, the app offers practical suggestions for looking after their mental health, or points them towards support when that is the right step.

We have also improved the interface, making it simpler for people to move around the app and find information that is relevant to them.

There is one thing we have deliberately left out. There is no AI-powered support in the app.

That was a decision rather than an oversight, and it is worth explaining because a lot of organisations are working through the same question right now.

AI is cheap and accessible. Adding a conversational support layer to a health app has never been easier or less expensive to build. Some of that work will prove genuinely valuable, and I expect the evidence base to develop quickly over the next few years.

Our position at the moment is that people recovering from injury, or managing their wellbeing, benefit most from contact with another person in a safe clinical context, with someone accountable for what happens next. A great deal of daily life is already spent online with very little real time connection in it. Adding another screen to that did not feel like the right contribution for us to make.

So we built habithealth+ to support the clinical relationship. Track what is happening between sessions. Bring that into the room. Leave the parts that require judgement, context and trust to the clinician.

We will deploy AI where it clearly gives our team time back to spend with the person in front of them. Ambient documentation, administrative load, navigation. We are in less of a hurry to put it between a clinician and a client.

This position may change. We are watching the evidence closely and I would rather revise our thinking than defend it. For now, getting people in front of people still looks like the right direction.

Source: Habit Health media release

Sector updates are provided by organisations to eHealthNews.nz and have not necessarily been edited or checked for accuracy. Any queries should be directed to the organisation issuing the release.

Do you have an item to add to sector updates?

Email your information to us at updates@hinz.org.nz

Return to eHealthNews.nz home page