Mobile Ethnography Delivering Powerful Insights in Healthcare Research
Mobile Ethnography in Healthcare Research
Research is crucial for all healthcare and pharmaceutical organizations. Understanding your patient’s journey and how your products and services are affecting their everyday lives is always at the core. Facing the challenges of the ‘new normal’ with access to healthcare becoming more complex for many vulnerable patients, meeting the needs of patients and healthcare professionals has never been more important.
Healthcare research can include many different methodologies of research ranging from focus groups, to in-depth interviews with observation. But there are many disadvantages to these methodologies.
1. Can be very time-consuming
Meeting with your patients can be very costly and time-consuming. From hours spent on travel, to the cost of flights and accommodation for the researcher & respondents, costs of the interview space rental and ad hoc expenses can add up quickly.
Analyzing responses gathered via traditional qualitative research approaches can also be very time consuming and can take a long time to draw first, actionable insights.
2. Lacks security and privacy
Online video calls often lack security and do not allow for respondent anonymization. IDIs and Focus Groups also lack privacy and confidentiality, and can often make the research participants feel uncomfortable and less likely to share in an open forum.
3. Introduces observer and group bias
Many respondents might not be willing to share their honest experiences in a group setting. Depending on how sensitive the research topic is, the researcher or research group can have a negative impact on the responses.
4. Takes the respondent out of context resulting in post rationalized feedback
The patients are taken out of the context. Instead of responding ‘in the moment’, the feedback they share relies on recall and is often post-rationalised. This can result in biased, less authentic responses.
What Makes Mobile Ethnography so Powerful for Healthcare Research?
1.Privacy
Indeemo’s Mobile Ethnography applicaton offers a private 1-to-1 connection between the researcher and the research respondent (often patients or healthcare professionals). This is critical in healthcare and pharmaceutical research especially for sensitive topics where respondents would not be likely to open up in a Focus Group setting.
2. Security
Thanks to its remote capabilities, Digital Ethnography offers a safe and secure way of connecting with patients. Patients can participate in the research completely remotely thus ensuring they are not exposed to anything that could potentially harm their health. This had become particularly important in the recent month where COVID made face-to-face meeting impossible.
3. Asynchronous
Mobile ethnography allows patients and healthcare professionals to complete tasks in their own time from the comfort of their own homes and in their free time. This is particularly beneficial for time-pressed healthcare professionals who normally wouldn’t have the ability to take time out of their busy schedules to participate in research. The asynchronous element also enables participants to upload their responses in context, this way all responses gathered are contextual, very honest, and not post rationalized.
4. Contextual
For both medical practitioners and patients, Mobile Ethnography enables contextual, raw feedback. Research participants can respond from the comfort of their own home or while purchasing their medicine/visiting their doctor/attending to a patient thus helping researchers get a more honest, in - the - moment unfiltered insight into the lives of the respondents.
5. Longitudinal
Mobile Ethnography is a longitudinal methodology, meaning projects can run a few days, weeks, or even several months. This enables the researchers to get to know and connect with the patients and accurately map their journey. The longitudinal approach is incredibly powerful as it enables researchers to capture actions and behaviors over time, thus allowing for an incredibly rich insight.
Private, safe and secure
Private: we connect you 1-1 with research participants to maximise privacy and trust.
Safe: anonymnous respondent logins and segregated recruiter accounts minimise PHI
Secure: our platform has been independently vetted by large healthcare providers.
GDPR Compliant
ISO 27001 Certified
Enterprise Ready
HIPAA Compliant
Summary
In the current challenging climate, Mobile Ethnography not only offers a viable alternative to traditional healthcare research but also allows for a private, 1 to 1 communication. Unlike other qualitative research methodologies the Indeemo Mobile Diary Study app and dashboard enables you, the researcher to walk in the respondent’s shoes and to experience their every moment in a real, raw way. All of which, enables you to generate insights that you previously could not easily do for healthcare and pharmaceutical research.
Want to learn more about how we can support you with your next healthcare research study?
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