The current decade has seen the boom of wearable tech. Today, we have embraced this tech and are using it in daily routine. Apart from being a fashion statement and geeky, these devices serve a noble purpose. They watch out for you. Yes, they keep an eye on your health and help to save you against several issues. In the following, I will explain that in detail.
Wearable tech comes in several forms including:
Wristbands
Watches
Shoes
Headbands
Eyeglasses
Necklaces
Belts
Caps
Shirts
Most of these products contain sensor collect raw data. They feed this data to a database for analysis. The analysis triggers a response. The response can be an alert to a physician to contact the patient suffering from abnormal symptoms. These can help the doctor communicate with the patient and give them advice.
People who spend their time juggling between tasks more likely ignore their health. This negligence makes the test consume more time and delays reports. Therefore, wearing something that remains in contact with human skin to continuously and carefully monitor someone’s activity and fitness in real time can have its benefits. In short, wearable tech offers timely awareness on various health issues to both the patient and doctor.
With that said, following are four ways that help healthcare services improve their approach:
Real-time health monitoring
The rapid growth in tech has improved remote health monitoring. The real-time health monitoring devices are playing an important role and the products are developed to consider cost, usability, accuracy and security of data.
The technology also facilitates two-way communication between the doctor and patient, offering up-to-date healthcare information. The RMS system comes with two interfaces, one geared toward the user, and the second one designed for the doctor. The patient interface contains wearable sensors to extract medical data of the patient.
The listening port transfers information to a web server that accesses the data for doctor’s interface. For instance, a remote monitoring device with diagnostic framework finds an underlying health issue in real time. It can help avoid a potential health issue and let the patient recover. This system is compatible with several wearable sensors to extra the data and helps to learn different parameters including:
Heart rate
Blood pressure
Body temperate
These parameters help to detect severe issues beforehand.
Fitness
Healthcare centers like Beach Pain Center encourage the adoption of modern tech in a fitness routine. Wearable tech helps people with their fitness resolution, improving their chances of success. Fitness wearable helps to monitor or even tracking fitness metrics as the distance walked on run calorie consumption and even quality of sleep. These trackers sync to a computer for real-time tracking for health-related data.
These trackers are geared towards fitness maniacs or people trying to achieve a healthier outlook, like practicing chiropractic. It guides the user towards success.
Guest post by Nora Lissy, RN, BSN, MBA, director of healthcare information, Dimensional Insight.
It’s no surprise that chronic diseases are killing the United States both physically and financially. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), seven of the top 10 causes of death in 2010 were from chronic diseases, where two of the conditions—heart disease and cancer—together accounted for nearly 48 percent of all deaths. To add to the problem – effectively treating these conditions comes with an exceedingly high price tag. According to U.S. News & World Report, 86 percent of all healthcare spending is currently going towards the treatment of these chronic diseases, equating to more than $3 trillion annually.
So how can the healthcare industry combat the rise of chronic conditions while keeping escalating treatment costs down?
One of the most effective tools for monitoring chronic disease management while still keeping an eye on care costs is business intelligence. Business intelligence has continued to increase in prevalence within the healthcare industry in recent years. According to a HIMSS Analytics study, 41 percent of hospital respondents reported they currently use clinical and business intelligence tools for their analytics, with that number expected to continue to increase over the next two years. With business intelligence continuing to prove its value within healthcare, physicians are starting to see the true potential of this data-driven tool to positively impact the industry as whole, including with the management and overall cost of chronic diseases.
Below are three ways that business intelligence can help to improve chronic disease management and lower the rising costs of care.
Guest post by Susmit Pal, healthcare strategist, Healthcare & Life Sciences, Dell EMC
Susmit Pal
Aging populations and the rising incidence of chronic disease consume a disproportionate amount of healthcare resources. In the United States, about 75 percent of healthcare dollars go to chronic disease care and two out of every three Medicare recipients suffer from at least two chronic diseases.[1] The pressure for relief will grow as the population ages with approximately 10,000 new patients estimated to enroll in Medicare every day for the next 15 years.[2] The current demand for resources for chronic disease care combined with the imminent spike in Medicare enrollment beg for achievable solutions and strategies that address costs, care quality and outcomes in the short term.
Enter the Internet of Things (IoT), also referred to as the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) within the healthcare industry. IoT is something that most are well-familiar with, but for the sake of clarity, we define it here as the purposeful connection of intelligent sensors, devices, and software to computer networking systems using Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, RFID or M2M wireless technology in order to promote an inter-functionality that serves a greater purpose. In healthcare, that greater purpose is the achievement of less costly and more information-driven and efficient patient care. Think wearable devices and wireless pill bottles, nanotechnology and ingestibles, and network-enabled medical devices like stethoscopes that can transmit cardiac data directly into a patient’s electronic health record (EHR).
The Impact on Chronic Disease Management IoT shows great promise in helping to improve the health of patients with chronic conditions. Combinations of remote monitoring, analytics and mobile platforms have repeatedly cut re-admissions of high risk patients with congestive heart failure (CHF) by more than half.[3] Evermore affordable and easier-to-use devices, such as wireless scales and heart rate and blood pressure monitors are improving overall wellness for the chronically ill. In fact, some researchers estimate that the value of improved health in patients with chronic disease using remote monitoring could amount to $1.1 trillion per year by 2025.[4]
At the consumer level, the rapid increase in the type and variety of personal mobile fitness trackers like Fitbit®, and online fitness applications for consumers demonstrates comfort with IoT to monitor physical health. Their very existence has created an avenue for patients to become more accustomed to tracking and managing their health online. In response, healthcare organizations are beginning to incorporate them into their consumer engagement strategies, while payers are starting to offer discounts and incentives tied to wellness management.
IoT is also helping to spur on some rather exciting new technological advancements in chronic disease management. Connected wheelchairs, for instance, are enabling people with disabilities to engage with care providers on a whole new level, communicating health alerts to care teams and repair notices to manufacturers. A group from the University of Missouri is spearheading a development project to utilize home monitoring sensors in an effort to prevent falls among the elderly by providing alerts to the patient when there is a fall risk, while Dell Healthcare is working with hospitals to leverage the use of tablets with integrated card readers to enable remote healthcare for home-based treatments.
There exists an even greater potential for IoT to impact chronic disease management at a population-level when combined with data analytics. For instance, Health Net Connect (HNC) has initiated a population diabetic management program with the intent to improve clinical outcomes and healthcare savings for diabetes, one of the deadliest and most costly of chronic diseases—and the results are impressive. They captured vitals and blood work from study participants over a 6-month period to measure the impact that routine teleconferencing and patient monitoring had on outcome. Patients in the program showed a significant decrease in key biomarkers, including 9.5 percent lower HB A1C and 35 percent decrease in LDL. To put that into perspective, for every 1 percent drop in HB A1C they estimate an $8,600 annual savings, and for every 1 percent decrease in LDL there is a 1 percent decrease in coronary heart disease, which costs on average a million dollars over a lifetime. HNC is continuing this program, noting that “this project has, and currently is demonstrating return on investment with cost savings, improved access for program members to their physician, improved clinical outcomes, and improved knowledge by program members on their disease condition.”[5]
