As you may have picked up on by now, I like to criticize a lot. This is not because I'm a particularly negative human being but I believe that businesses need people who question everything so that they can improve their products, strategies and overall confidence about what they are producing. Let's call it "Social Quality Assurance"!
With that being said... Welcome to the first Health Care Bear post of 2015! Hope you all had a wonderful time over the holidays, I assume my present from you got lost in the post right?! Anyway, in keeping with my recent post about Google Glass, I wanted to expand that out into wearables and sensors in the Healthcare market.
This blog post was inspired by an article by Penn Medicine[1] in which they discuss the behavioral aspect to wearables and sensors. It's undeniable that there is a lot of hype and ongoing investment but there is a cultural change that must run in parallel to compliment the adoption of these devices. I've listed a few of my thoughts below as to the pros and cons of this technology so sit back and enjoy...
Pros
- Power to the consumer - Being able to own / be in charge of a piece of technology that will ultimately lead to health benefits and financial incentives is empowering and continues the trend of greater consumer engagement. Patients will start taking on more and more responsibility for their own well being as incentives become more enticing and penalties more severe.
- Technology already in the market - Although older generations may need support to get to grips with the technology currently available, the beauty is that pretty much everything we need is already at our disposal. Phone apps are available to track sleep patterns, exercise and dietary information. The Samsung Galaxy S5 even has a heart rate monitor built in. Consumers have more or less everything they need, the business mechanisms just need to be put in place to make use of these. When it comes to devices actually worn by the subject, these are already relatively cheap with some basic heart monitoring watches available under £10. More advanced wearables are still a little pricey but will very quickly start declining in price.
- Telehealth and the virtual world - We're starting to see some primary care visits being carried out remotely and this is set to increase over the coming years. Whether the consumer side of the conversation is at a PC or via a mobile phone, the data captured by the wearables will more than likely be stored on the same device used to contact the practitioner and therefore made available quite easily. Also, as virtual interaction becomes more routine, alerts may be set up to monitor when someone's heart rate drops significantly for example and then a practitioner or ambulance can be called automatically to assess the situation. The possibilities are endless.
Cons
- The "Big Brother" effect - In my humble opinion, this isn't a critical factor but there are a lot of skeptics and conspiracy theorists out there that already believe we are constantly being watched and monitored and that this encroaches on our freedom. If they are worried about CCTV cameras, recording devices in lampposts and phones being hacked; chances are they won't be running out to the shops to buy an electronic device that is on their person 24/7.
- More data... great! - The Healthcare vertical already has a tonne of data that they still don't know what to do with. Yes, data for a specific patient will be able to be analyzed by a practitioner for the purposes of improving the patient's health but in the grander scale of things, how are Healthcare organizations going to cope with this new influx of data on a larger scale when they're not yet at the stage of being confident enough to capture, manage and analyze the data already available to them?
- #Integration - This is a key theme of 2015. So your wearable tracks your heart rate for example, great, then what? That data needs to be stored, shared with Payers/Providers and ultimately analyzed. With so many devices in the market, the data needs to be standardized and made available to those who need it as well as being presented in a simple way so that relevant actions can be made. Case in point, I used to drive a car with a monitor in the engine which would monitor my speed and distance travelled and relay that back to my insurer. The same needs to happen with wearables as well as collating that with other healthcare institutions to analyze the data on a grander scale. There's a lot of work to be done before this is possible.
A final note about who will use these and why... I like to categorize the general public into three categories when talking about this topic: those that need it (the ill), those that want it (the fit) and those that don't really care (the lazy.) Before I carry on, I'd like to note that obviously not all of these will have the funds to buy these devices but for the purposes of this analysis, let's say everyone is on a level playing field. The ill will adopt these devices in conjunction with Healthcare Providers in an attempt to improve their health, simple. The fit will adopt these devices independently in order to maximize their own daily routines, fine. The third category is where it gets interesting; the average Joe doesn't particularly care what their heart rate is, whether or not they're getting the idyllic amount of sleep or how many steps they've taken in a day. What they do care about is money (let's face it, who doesn't?) and so to include this demographic, organizations may have to offer incentives such as lower insurance premiums or rewards for participation in clinical trials.
I could go on but I'll leave it there for now. If you have any other pros or cons then feel free to leave a comment below.
Best Regards,
Jonathan Cordwell
Research Analyst, Healthcare Strategy
ResearchNetwork, CSC
Research Analyst, Healthcare Strategy
ResearchNetwork, CSC
- Penn Medicine, Wearable Tracking Devices Alone Won't Drive Health Behavior Change, According to Penn Researchers, 01/08/2015: http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/news/News_Releases/2015/01/wearables/
