Using behavioral nudges to treat diabetes

Thomas H. Davenport is a professor at Babson College, a research fellow at the MIT Initiative on the digital economy, and a senior adviser at Deloitte Analytics. James Guszcza is the US chief data scientist for Deloitte Consulting LLP. Greg Szwartz is a managing director of advanced analytics for Deloitte Consulting LLP.

Health care practitioners and payer organizations increasingly use big data to overcome what might be called a “flaw of averages” in traditional medicine: a treatment that has been tested at a population level might, in fact, work better for some individuals than others. The goal...