Pharmapack Europe: What Can Urinals Teach Us About Patient Adherence?

A chief behavioral officer talks about integrating the "human factor" within healthcare technologies to boost their acceptability, usability and impact.

Nicolas Fieulaine, Chief Behavioral Officer at A+Be, a spin-off of the Stevanato Group.
Nicolas Fieulaine, Chief Behavioral Officer at A+Be, a spin-off of the Stevanato Group.

If you ignore human psychology, it won’t ignore you (or your products). That was the message Nicolas Fieulaine gave in his talk at Pharmapack Europe.

A social psychology professor-turned-chief behavioral officer at Stevanato Group spin-off A+Be, Fieulaine is well-versed in the concept that simply educating people will typically not change a behavior. “We have to change our minds about changing behavior,” he noted, adding that much of decision-making involves the non-conscious (“fast thinking”) part of people’s brains.

Giving people a nudge

Fieulaine talked about the concept of nudge units, a term from the book Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness, written by University of Chicago economist Richard Thaler and Harvard Law School Professor Cass Sunstein.

The idea is that people can be "nudged" into making more healthy choices and making them more consistently. “Knowing and being informed does not lead individuals to action, it requires motivation and incentives,” said Fieulaine.

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