Hasso-Plattner-Institut
Prof. Dr. Erwin Böttinger
 

Digital Therapeutic and Personalized Decision Support Interventions for People with Low Back Pain: A Health Economic Perspective

Daniel Lewkowicz

Each year millions of people experience unspecified low back pain, the most common health-related problem world-wide, which ultimately results in a tremendous economic burden for healthcare systems. With the rise of digital therapeutic measures, a new approach emerged to address the physical as well as behavioral factors contributing to back pain. In this research project, we evaluate the economic consequences of introducing scalable and broadly accessible digital therapeutic interventions. Thereby, we also address another challenge which is the long-term adherence to these digital care programs. As people lack to fully engage to these programs and overall drop-out rates remain high, we develop data-driven decision support interventions and investigate to what extent individual adherence can be increased through personalized and targeted interventions. Moreover, by also drawing insights from behavioral economics theory, we explore how we can nudge people to change their routine and adhere to guidelines in order to prevent or reduce low back pain.