Initiation is a key defining factor when dissecting wearables and healthcare. When focusing on the provisioning of the wearable systems there are two approaches: healthcare initiated and consumer initiated.
Healthcare initiated wearables are most commonly given out as part of a disease management program run by the hospital system. However, these are only exploration activities. More visionary approaches are seeing it integrated into the electronic record and prescribed as part of a wellness platform. This shows great promise in areas where recovering activity levels are critical, like after chemo treatments. One example of this approach is Apple’s Health Kit’s work to integrate with Epic systems at various hospitals. Here, the healthcare professional goes into the electronic record system to add a new patient user during an encounter. This put great strain on an already overworked resource, for example, asking a doctor to check if the patient has the proper device and iOS version.
Consumer initiated wearables will play a key role in public health research. Here they ask participants to opt in to send non-identified data such as with Apple’s Research Kit. Also, at the end of one of the healthcare initiated programs, the users can be given the wearable or the option to buy the wearable. The hope here is that they would continue to use it independently to help maintain their health. And of course, the most common use now is a healthcare professional simply suggesting the use of the wearable, and leaving the user to go out and start its use independently. This can be supported with incentives like discounts, but ultimately has little to no healthcare workflow integration.
Wearables show great promise as tools for healthcare entities to foster better health. However, wearable use cases should not be thought of as interchangeable with existing medical devices in the home like a blood pressure monitor. Wearables in healthcare will continue to develop similar but unique use cases and deployment strategies. If I were to guess their ultimate fate, I would expect wearables to be excellent at bridging disparate healthcare system entities serving the same population, such as community health programs, retail environments, clinics and hospitals. Each entity would play a role bases on their strengths, such as a doctor suggesting the initial purchase and the community program to offer more long term support.
Edited by
Ken Briodagh
