Today I’m attending the Consumer Health IT Summit AND working on my slides for a webinar tomorrow,Wearable Workflow Needs Health Systems Engineering (register here). (And following tweets from the HBMA conference and writing this blog post!) Tomorrow’s webinar is about wearables and classic concerns of industrial engineering in healthcare, namely work (and workflow) improvement. But patients, patient experience, and patient engagement are becoming so important to improving healthcare workflow. And wearables are becoming a key component of patient experience and engagement. So, I cross-indexed “wearables” and “patient engagement” and found the following articles and quotes. I’d be interested your take on them.
Blog: Healthcare Apps and Wearables – A Gateway to Patient Engagement?
“The information must flow without the patient having to facilitate it. Physicians must be part of the process of evaluating the engagement. With the world of wearables only in its infancy, interoperability of the network needs to define and drive how these independent silos will interact. When this networked transformation happens, the power of the system will far exceed that of the isolated patient or physician operating independently. Over time, this data will be combined with a complete health record to provide truly personalized medical updates and a comprehensive view of your health and habits, thus filling in all the gaps between medical checkups and doctor visits.”
…presenters and vendors to stress patient engagement through mobile health technology and workflow
“Wearable technologies … are taking connected health to the next level since some patients leave their mobile device at home or in the car. By having a device that is constantly worn on the body, patients can be empowered in a way that was not possible before. Some of these connected “wearables” are monitoring biometrics like heart rate and respiration. Others are simply detecting patient movement and sending reminders and alerts. We are seeing an evolution of wearables interacting with mobile devices and other ecosystems of connected health that already exist within the home. Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, 3G/4G and near field communication radios and sensors are all working together to keep patients connected like never before.”
The Future Of Healthcare And Wearables
“Healthcare in general is being impacted by an aging population, which means we need to devise new strategies and technology to help individuals better manage their own health (e.g. obesity), which will improve outcomes, increase longevity, and also help manage costs,” he said. “Behavior change is integral to achieving this goal; as Lord Kelvin stated: ‘To measure is to know. If you can not measure it, you can not improve it.’ Wearables are key to patient engagement….
the biggest challenge is integrating this data into the existing workflow and health IT systems. As a patient, Dr. Nick says that “there is no pathway for me to record, report, and include my data. Take a simple example of my blood pressure. My doctor has no way of including this in my electronic medical record (EMR) and is not included in his workflow. There are some exceptions, but this information needs to be captured consistently, flow to the doctor, and then the EMR for it to be part of the standard practice and care.”
Wearable Technology: The Coming Revolution in Healthcare
“the adoption of wearable healthcare-related devices could indeed be a significant step in patient engagement and improving population health — two critical success factors driving today’s increasingly complex healthcare environment. Specifically, wearable health technology brings three distinctly beneficial trends to the table — connected information, community, and gamification. By harnessing this trifecta, healthcare leaders have new ways to build engagement and create accurate, far-reaching views of both personal and population health….By bringing together people with a common interest such as weight loss, wearables serve as a mechanism to build engagement and at the same time compile information….Healthcare organizations can tap the power of that data to engage patients and develop more effective and more personalized approaches to care, thereby lowering the overall cost of care.”