“Technology that incorporates patient engagement enhances patient’s desire to work towards a health goal.” connected digital world, chiropractors potentially reach millions of people and prospective patients online through podcasts, Facebook, Twitter or YouTube. Lifestyle marketing is here to stay, and the next level includes providing patients with quality products from your online store. Current treatment care may include recom-mending or making available products designed to improve the quality of patient health. The in-office store is limited to practice hours, staff expertise, access to quality vendors and dismal competitive pricing. Providing your patients with in-house ac-cess to quality products takes hours of research, staff time ordering inventory, and overhead cost that most practitioners simply can’t afford. www.canadianchiropractor.ca Seventy-five per cent of consumers have a smart-phone, and a majority of them research and/or shop online using their mobile devices. Patients place a lot of trust into their health-care provider’s recom-mendation – from researching products to buying online at the right price. If you don’t provide the product at the right price, they may go elsewhere. Enter the rise of the turnkey e-commerce web-site. Early adopters of online storefronts set up and maintained websites that demanded a large invest-ment of time and money. Practitioners found that retail shelf space was hard to justify – keeping inventory in stock is expensive, setting up and maintaining a website using a multitude of drop shippers is costly and complicated, technology is changing rapidly and return on investment isn’t guaranteed. E-commerce solutions have evolved with market demand. Tasks that can be outsourced today in-clude full catalog management, relationships with single drop-ship partners, SEO services, blog posts, email marketing and social media interactions with customers, as well as fully managed e-commerce services. The cost of fully managed e-commerce services is more affordable than ever, with some forward thinking e-retailers offering a complete solution with no upfront cost, no long-term commitment, and a low monthly cost. With such attractive options, it’s no surprise that more doctors are setting up shop online, and 2017 may be a pivotal year for e-commerce integration. Big data New integrative tools are changing the way we treat patients. The days of using an x-ray to prove the need for care are long gone. Scanning technology with the ability to measure spinal neural function and consolidate the “big three” (sEMG, thermal and HRV) or all five tests (adding the wROM and algometry) into a single, overall impression, al-lows chiropractors to make more accurate care recommendations with better clarity regarding patient outcomes. The latest neural functional innovation links today’s most important spinal-nerve analysis with simplified reporting designed to include patient experience. Technology that incorporates patient engagement through gamification enhances a pa-tient’s desire to work towards a health goal, which will in turn increase patient retention. Patients and chiropractors alike have long needed a single, tan-gible goal for ongoing chiropractic services, and this groundbreaking technology may provide the answer. December 2016 Canadian Chiropractor 23
Chiropractic + Naturopathic Doctor December 2016: Page 23
