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135. Using Behavioral Science in Healthcare, Interview with Aline Holzwarth

Jan 15, 2021

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In today’s episode, I am so excited to introduce you to Aline Holzwarth. Talk about an amazing person doing fantastic and exciting things! Aline is both a principal at the Center for Advanced Hindsight, where she works directly with Dan Ariely and the whole awesome team there. She is ALSO the head of behavioral science at Pattern Health.

Today you will get to learn about both of her roles, a little of what it’s like to work with Dan, and about so many great things that she is doing to apply behavioral science in business.

I hope you love everything recommended via The Brainy Business! Everything was independently reviewed and selected by me, Melina Palmer. So you know, as an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. That means if you decide to shop from the links on this page (via Amazon or others), The Brainy Business may collect a share of sales or other compensation. Show Notes:

[00:08] I’m excited to introduce you to Aline Holzwarth, principal at the Center for Advanced Hindsight and head of behavioral science at Pattern Health.
[03:05] Aline shares about all the exciting things she is doing and how she got into behavioral science. She enjoys being exposed to new and different business applications and she was drawn in by the real-world impact.
[05:32] She loves both of her roles so much that she just can’t give either of them up.
[07:21] She shares about some of her favorite projects she has worked on.
[10:23] At the Center for Advanced Hindsight many of their projects come from Dan and some are chosen by the team.
[12:48] The more you are exposed to, the more connections you are going to make.
[13:28] Pattern Health is a digital health platform that works with researchers and clinicians to help them do their research and translate that research into clinical use cases.
[15:03] Aline’s job is to bake behavioral science into the Pattern Health platform to make behaviors that are not fun at all a little easier to do.
[17:24] There is going to be attrition no matter how good your app is, but ideally they try to limit it.
[20:21] Creating a Care Circle to offer constant support has been very impactful especially in long-term situations.
[23:31] They share ways to put people together for more successful support.
[24:10] There is a lot of benefit in support groups, but getting people to find one and show up is very difficult.
[26:44] You can nudge people in the direction that will be most helpful to them but also allow them to have the freedom of choice.
[28:15] Virgil is their mascot and virtual pet at Pattern Health. Virgil is one way to track daily progress. People get very attached to Virgil.
[30:48] Melina shares about the app, Forest, that holds you accountable.
[31:41] Virgil is based on the ideas of rewards substitution. They are substituting the long term reward for a short term reward. The long term things usually don’t motivate us.
[34:09] Behavioral interventions like Virgil help you overcome tiny hurdles until it becomes habitual. We often have to combine behavior interventions to make each one more effective.
[36:01] Aline shares what the future holds for her. She is really interested in getting more into the idea of personality matching.
[37:23] One area she is really excited to start developing is personalizing to peoples’ personalities.
[40:01] They are using the Big 5 personality model.
[42:10] In behavioral economics we are looking at things that all people do on a more general scale. Using personality, we may be able to drill down and know which behavioral interventions work best based on personality type.
[43:19] Aline is doing an interview series for Pattern Health looking at innovators, health, and research.
[43:54] Melina’s closing reflections.

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