According to the CDC, approximately 1 in 3 people in the United States has a chronic illness, with over 33% of people worldwide living with more than 2 chronic conditions.

At Human Health, we recognized that people needed more support, so we designed a mobile app to empower people with chronic conditions to self-manage and advocate for their health.

Here are 5 reasons why using the Human Health app could help you or your loved one.

Improve communication with your healthcare team

Healthcare appointments are getting shorter, and it can sometimes be hard to remember everything you want to address once you’re at the clinic.

Keeping a record of how your symptoms have been affecting you, as well as which treatments you’ve been taking and how often, might help you remember the important points you want to address with your healthcare team.

Adding notes to certain symptoms or health events within the Human Health app can help you keep track of extra information that you might have forgotten about, but felt important when you were experiencing them.

Evidence to empower self-advocacy

In 2024, Human Health conducted a survey of social media users on patient perspectives regarding mistrust of healthcare professionals. Some major themes were identified which highlighted why access to tools like health trackers are becoming increasingly more important for patients.

• Feeling gaslit or not understood: Many users reported that they often felt as if their practitioner didn’t believe them.
• Feeling reduced to a narrow view of their health: Users felt like their practitioner was continually focusing on specific conditions or aspects of their health, without considering new information.
• Only feeling listened to after self-advocacy: Users often felt as if they needed to ‘educate’ their practitioner, and had to insist that they knew what they were experiencing in order to receive appropriate care.

Human Health can provide you with real insights about your symptoms, which you can show to your healthcare team directly as a visual summary.

From your health report, they’ll be able to easily see how your symptoms have been affecting you, and how they have improved or worsened over time. They can also see how this lines up with the treatments you’ve been taking.

This way, they can see your real data right in front of them as a comprehensive depiction of your experiences.

Recognize patterns and changes

There’s a phenomenon known as recency bias, where the brain places more importance on recent events, rather than those that came before. In terms of our health, this means that sometimes we might feel like certain symptoms have been better or worse overall just because they have been trending that way recently, even if it isn’t true over a longer period of time.

With Human Health, you can see how your symptoms have been changing over time, freeing you from the blinders biases like this can place on your perception of your health journey.

Using your insights data, you might also be able to easily recognize patterns in when your symptoms improve or worsen, identify triggers for these changes, and learn if your treatments are making an impact on your symptoms.

Keep on top of your treatment plan

In 2019, almost half of all American adults reported taking prescription drugs within the last month. Although prescription medication is a common therapeutic intervention, there are many other options that patients commonly utilise.

Managing the dose, frequency, timing, and other variables for each treatment can get overwhelming, especially for many patients with 1 or more chronic conditions who may have complex treatment plans.

Human Health makes it fuss-free to manage your treatment plan. We’ll even send you notifications to remind you, so you never miss a treatment again.

Feel in control of your health

We created Human Health to put patients back in the driver’s seat of their health journey. By helping you keep track of how your symptoms change over time, which treatments you’re on and when you’re taking them, Human Health can build you an accurate picture of your current health and how it’s progressed.

The insights you gain from tracking your health could help you better understand what works for you, and what hinders your progress towards the health outcomes that you deserve.

Click here to download Human Health and get started today!

Resources

1. CDC. Chronic Disease Prevalence in the US: Sociodemographic and Geographic Variations by Zip Code Tabulation Area. Available at: https://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2024/23_0267.htm
2. Chowdhury, Saifur Rahman et al. Global and regional prevalence of multimorbidity in the adult population in community settings: a systematic review and meta-analysis. The Lancet eClinicalMedicine, Volume 57, 101860. Available at: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(23)00037-8/fulltext
3. H. G. Barrett, K. M. J. Simpson. Patient perspectives on healthcare providers: A rapid qualitative evaluation. Human Health Scientic Reports 24-09. 2024. Available at: https://www.human.health/blog/patient-perspectives-on-healthcare-providers-a-rapid-qualitative-evaluation
4. Martin CB, Hales CM, Gu Q, Ogden CL. Prescription Drug Use in the United States, 2015-2016. NCHS Data Brief. 2019 May;(334):1-8. Available at: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31112126/

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