Calls for rethink on technology and wearables data in healthcare
Speakers at the Connected Health Symposium in Boston were dissatisfied with the current state of technology on both the consumer and institutional sides. Dr Robert Pearl, CEO of Kaiser Permanente’s Medical Group, stated that fitness trackers serve little purpose in medical practice and that video will be more important for the healthcare industry than wearables. While doctors like to receive patient-generated data, they do not want to be overwhelmed by it; they need the right data at the right time. Some existing technology is also inaccurate and wearables data needs to be integrated more effectively with existing health IT systems.

Maybe healthcare is thinking about data from wearable devices in all the wrong ways.

Speaking Thursday at the 12th annual Connected Health Symposium in Boston, Dr. Robert Pearl, CEO of Kaiser Permanente‘s Permanente Medical Group, said that, from a physician’s perspective, Fitbits and other fitness trackers are good for one thing: “December.” In other words, they make great Christmas gifts, but don’t serve much purpose in medical practice.

Pearl also said that he believed video will turn out to be more important for healthcare — not health or personal fitness, but the healthcare industry — than wearables.

Earlier in the day, members of a panel on integrating patient-generated data into clinical practice were less pessimistic, but still not satisfied with the current state technology on both the consumer and institutional sides.

Patient-generated data is useful for showing health trends, said Drew Schiller, co-founder and CTO of Validic, a Durham, North Carolina-based vendor that aggregates data from digital health apps and devices. But, he said, it is “relatively worthless” to pull in data if it doesn’t get in front of a physician or a care management team. “It has to be actionable,” Schiller said.

Physician buy-in is “under-recognized, but it’s huge,” according to Dr. Stanley Shaw, co-director of the Center for Assessment Technology and Continuous Health (CATCH) at Massachusetts General Hospital. They want patient-generated data, but they don’t want to be overwhelmed, or they will ignore what patients bring them.

“Physicians don’t need all the data. They just need the right data at the right time to take action,” Shaw said.

There has to be a plan that drives benefit to patients or clinicians, added Dr. Christopher Alban, vice president and clinical informaticist at Epic Systems. He noted that Epic user Ochsner Health System in the New Orleans area has something called the “O Bar,” modeled on the Apple Genius Bar, to patients choose the right devices and teach them how to use the gadgets properly.

And there has to be trust in data that patients generate. Big data often is broken down into components known as the three Vs: velocity, veracity and volume.

Schiller said that some FDA-cleared consumer devices are highly accurate, but others have been known to fluctuate. “This is a technology problem. This is not a patient-generated data problem,” he said.

Ed Park, COO of health IT vendor athenahealth, said that he was less worried about the veracity of data from wearables because, from his company’s perspective, there isn’t an economic benefit for users to cheat (though there probably is in corporate wellness programs). “The calibration of these things will work themselves out over time,” Park said.

Park said that technology on the provider side “has to become more porous.” Wearables data has to be integrated more seamlessly with existing health IT systems.

Innovators in digital health may be chilled by the recent Wall Street Journal exposé on well-funded and well-hyped diagnostics startup Theranos, Park hinted. “HIPAA is no longer the bar. The bar is not being on the front page of the Wall Street Journal,” he said.

Photo: Flickr user juhansonin