PRACTICAL APPLICATION OF THE COMBINATORIAL PRINCIPLES IN THE INTENSIFICATION OF MOTIVATION FOR A HEALTHY LIFESTYLE

Abstract

A healthy lifestyle is a basic preventive measure to avert non-communicable diseases and premature death, as a consequence. Motivation is one of the ways to modify a human lifestyle. Motivation for healthy lifestyle is a multi-component problem, which includes a variety of components (internal, external; incentives; skills availability; awareness of risk factors; cooperation and etc.). Individual "motivational interviewing" and reliance on "basic needs" are the most effective to deal with risk factors in the basis of motivation. Motivation via automation based on the combinatorial principles is considered in this article as a primary prevention method of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) by increasing the coverage of informing about detected risk factors. The large-scale coverage of the entire population by measures is the basis for the effectiveness of primary prevention. However, the current working conditions of primary care physicians have some obstacles as well as opportunities. Obstacles include time resource, skills availability, absence of tools for monitoring the effectiveness of specific incentives directed at enhancing motivation, absence of adjusted and validated assessment methods for individual internal motivation for healthy lifestyle, assessment of the effectiveness in the motivational interviewing (in Russia). The opportunities include information technologies, algorithms, medical recommendations, national manuals, that allow to automate and unify the process at the primary step. Formation of work priorities on identified risk factors for medical experts, directed individual "beneficial tips" (general plan of tips on healthy lifestyle) is possible due to the offered automation. This article considers the way of enhancing motivation to a healthy lifestyle via a primary care physician using the example of a medical organisation in Russia by automating processes applying the methods of combinatorics (the multiplication principle), the logic concept, and principles of "motivational interviewing". The results suggest a meaningful gap in effectiveness improvement - there is a 15% increase in the satisfaction about awareness of risk factors and healthy lifestyle (as per patient feedback) (Pearson's Chi - squared test is 67.77 (at p <0.001)), further research on effectiveness is being conducted to measure awareness coverage.