Consumers more willing to share health data than before pandemic

New research has revealed that consumer behaviour around managing their health information is changing as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

An annual survey conducted by Deloitte Center of Health Solutions has tracked consumers’ perceptions and attitudes about health care and health insurance since 2008. This year, it followed it  with a second, coronavirus-specific survey to see how consumers’ opinions about health care may be changing as a result of the pandemic.

The coronavirus specific survey found that prior to the pandemic, the idea of sharing personal health information from health- and fitness-monitoring devices wasn’t overwhelmingly popular. From 2018 to early 2020, there was a decline in consumers’ willingness to share personal health data from such devices with their doctor, family and emergency services.

The pandemic, however, is gradually changing consumers’ attitudes and perceptions about how valuable sharing such data can be, particularly during a crisis. Of the surveyed consumers, 71% said they’re willing to share personal health information with their health insurance company, compared with 65% before the crisis.

On sharing the data with a local healthcare system or hospital, 73% participants said they’re willing to share data compared with 71% before the pandemic. 53% said they would share personal health data with a leading national health care provider, compared with 47% pre-pandemic.

Some consumers were also willing to share their personal health data with entities outside of the health care industry, perhaps in a bid to help contact tracing efforts. The surveys also shed light on which consumers were most likely to share personal health data they collected with their doctors.

In 2020, 42% of consumers reported using tools to track health-improvement goals and measure fitness levels. Among those who did, about half said they shared such data with their doctors. Those with difficult chronic diseases were most likely to share such information with their doctors, with 75% of that group doing so. Consumers who considered themselves to be “in excellent health” were also very willing to share such data with their doctors, with 62% reporting doing so.

With many consumers delaying medical care because of the pandemic, sharing information from tools that track health data might also help consumers stay in touch with their doctors without going in for an appointment.

For this survey, the Deloitte Center of Health Solutions surveyed 4,522 adults from 24 February to 14 March 2020. For the pandemic specific COVID-19 survey, Deloitte polled 1,510 health care consumers in April 2020.

Source: Asia Insurance Review