Hi, this is Nick Webb and welcome to another episode of Fixing Healthcare. You know, I'm so excited about what I'm learning from the most incredible thought leaders in the world as we're filming the film, Fixing Healthcare. Also in the research from my upcoming book, The Healthcare Mandate, I was able to discover some really, really interesting things that I'd like to share with you here today. 

Now, first of all, let me tell you a little personal story. When I started the process of filming this film, I realized that I was a complete and total hypocrite. I was talking about the importance of being an optimal health yet, I was 20 pounds overweight, and then it hit me I needed to lose weight. In fact, I started to move into a level of pre hypertension. I felt sluggish and really began to feel unhealthy. So I decided I was going to do it. And it was hard. Oh yeah. And then I tried it again and it failed. And it was hard and they tried to get it failed and was hard. And I kept trying it. And it failed. And it was hard, until I started to really apply the principles and the science behind weight loss. That really made me realize what we need to do if we're going to fix healthcare. The good news is I lost over 22 pounds in three months, I've never felt better and now a healthy lifestyle is part of my daily routine. 

Now, here are the five things that I want to talk about that is necessary to change the states of the patient populations health. Now remember, 60, 70, 80%, depending whose numbers you use of all costs associated with health care is self inflicted chronic disease. In other words, for the most part, most healthcare costs really are about patients eating their way into chronic disease. Now smoking, drinking, sedentary lifestyle and other aspects of the lifestyle definitely do impact it, but none as big as weight in general. So how do we get people to a healthy state? Now we're going to talk about this in the film, we have some amazing case examples, with some great evidence that this stuff really works. 

So here are the five things. Number one, we have to use gamification, or healthcare game mechanics, to engage patients in a way to incentivize them to want to play the game of healthy life. And we'll talk about that in detail. The other one is social engagement in social communities around the support systems necessary to drive weight loss and health. Thirdly, is personification. We're not dealing with a monolithic patient, we're dealing with the patient across a range of motivator personas, meaning that thing does motivate me is different than somebody else for an example, some people are motivated to lose weight because of its cosmesis. Its physical impact. In other words, they want to look better. There are some people that are motivated to lose weight because they want to live long enough to see their grandchildren. And so you can't apply one game to all patients because it doesn't work, you have to apply the right game, to the right persona. When you do that really cool things happen. The other thing is customization, the way in which people like to engage these tools. Are they a millennial that's used to using a phone for all things engagement, or do they need to somebody to pick up a phone and call them? Are they how do they like to be engaged? What is the custom way in which we can connect these tools to that patient? And then lastly, but not leastly, how do we leverage patient journey mapping to really understand their journey throughout the day so that we can intervene in a way that has been The highest degree of compliance. That's what it's all about. That's what I did to lose 22 pounds. And it turns out from my research, these are the kinds of things that really, really work.