Beyond nudges: Leveraging behavioral science and AI for lasting health behavior change

Chandra Osborn: ©AdhereHealth

In an era where digital tools and artificial intelligence are revolutionizing health care, the challenge of driving individual and population-level health behaviors remains unmet by technology alone. While sophisticated analytics and algorithms; personalized outreach; and automated interventions are vital components of modern health care, their true potential lies in collaboration with human beings.

By integrating these tools with behavioral science expertise and human-to-human strategies, health care organizations can address the deeper complexities of patient behavior, which require more than nudges for improved health outcomes. Moving beyond simple nudges, while blending innovative technology with human empathy and insight to provide personalized, impactful care, health care plans can unlock the full potential of digital technology and behavioral science to improve health outcomes and create lasting change.

Personalizing effective engagement

Health behaviors are deeply personal, shaped by unique circumstances and challenges. Engagement efforts must account for this individuality to resonate with patients effectively.

AI offers powerful tools for segmentation and message personalization, helping identify the right patient and send the right message at the right time. Yet, algorithms have limitations. They can highlight patterns and probabilities, but they miss the nuances of a patient’s lived experience, as well as current and constant barriers impeding success.

For example, a patient might ignore automated app reminders about taking and/or refilling a medication because of caregiving responsibilities or financial stress. While AI can flag refill nonadherence, it takes a conversation to uncover current and persistent barriers and collaboration with the patient to overcome them accordingly.

By pairing AI’s precision with human touch, health care organizations can create patient journeys that adapt to individual needs, leading to more effective and actionable engagement outreach.

The essential role of human interaction

Personal interactions between clinicians and patients provide empathy and understanding that compliments the effectiveness of digital tools and AI. Care teams play a crucial role in bridging the gap between data-driven insights and meaningful support.

Consider a patient struggling with medication adherence. While AI might identify patterns of missed doses or flag high-risk behaviors, it’s often a conversation that uncovers root causes, such as transportation barriers, family responsibilities or confusion about instructions. Personal interactions build trust, helping patients feel supported and understood in ways that technology alone cannot achieve.

This balance of technology and human interactions is proving essential in health care. By combining the efficiency of AI with the depth of human capabilities, care teams can deliver more personalized, impactful support. It’s also valuable to weave behavior change techniques into interactions to help drive engagement and barrier resolution. These methods are best suited to address complex patient needs.

Moving beyond nudges

Nudges—framed content copy, process flows and experiences that account for and address people’s cognitive biases, so they take specific actions—have been growing in popularity in business settings, as well as health care circles. From creating urgency and removing unnecessary steps, to using defaults or simplifying information to reduce cognitive overload, nudges have been effective at prompting simple behaviors like opening health-related emails, scheduling a health appointment or engaging with health apps.

However, nudges often fall short when it comes to complex behaviors that require someone to overcome significant barriers to both initiate and sustain performance, such as managing chronic medications or other aspects of chronic disease care. For example, a reminder to refill a prescription may prompt someone to press a button to request a pharmacy fill, but it doesn’t address an individual’s unique and ongoing barriers to successfully picking up the medication, understanding how to take it or consistently following the prescribed regimen.

Medication adherence barriers might include, but are not limited to, rising medication costs, difficulty managing side effects, transportation challenges, or even denial and fatalistic attitudes toward chronic medication use. Behavior change requires a holistic approach that is mindful of each person’s cognitive, psychosocial and environmental factors influencing their decisions and actions. By understanding the context of peoples’ lives, we can design interventions that not only initiate behavior changes but sustain them over time.

Behavioral science and the future of health care

The integration of AI and behavioral science represents an exciting opportunity to redefine patient care. Together, these disciplines can develop advanced models that predict patient behaviors and customize interventions with unprecedented accuracy. For health care providers, this approach streamlines routine tasks, enabling them to focus on meaningful interactions. For patients, it means receiving support that is both efficient and empathetic, addressing immediate needs while fostering long-term engagement.

Looking ahead, the health care system must prioritize a synergistic model where technology enhances—not replaces—human connection. By blending AI’s scalability with behavioral science’s expertise, the industry can drive lasting behavior change, improve health outcomes and promote a more equitable health care system.

A collaborative path forward

The future of health care lies in collaboration: between AI and human beings, between technology and empathy, and between scalable solutions and personalized care. As we advance these strategies, we move closer to a health care system that not only supports patients in making changes but empowers them to sustain those changes for the long term.

Chandra Osborn, Ph.D., MPH, is the Chief Behavioral Officer at AdhereHealth. She specializes in applying behavioral science to improve medication adherence and health outcomes.