Alerts With Risk Information to Increase Influenza Vaccinations

The CDC (Centers for Disease Control) recommends a flu vaccination to everyone aged 6+ months, with rare exception; almost anyone can benefit from the vaccine, which can reduce illnesses, missed work, hospitalizations, and death. One barrier to vaccination is a lack of "cues to action," and, in particular, the lack of direct recommendation from medical personnel; this barrier is arguably the most effectively overcome by a simple nudge of clinicians, compared with barriers such as negative attitudes toward vaccination, low perceived utility of vaccination, and less experience with having received the vaccine.

Geisinger partnered with Medial EarlySign (Medial) to develop a machine learning (ML) algorithm to help identify people at risk for serious flu-associated complications based on existing electronic health record data. Eligible at-risk patients will be randomized to an active control group (clinician will be shown a standard flu alert) or one of two experimental groups (clinician will be shown an alert indicating patient's high risk, with or without describing the patient's factors contributing to that risk).