This Week in Health Tech Using wearables for preventative patient care with Dr. Michael Farmer
We have our first physician on This Week in Health Tech. Dr. Michael Farmer, Cardiologist and founder of Corverix to talk about wearables.
Michael got into wearables because he found current healthcare very reactive and not enough on prevention. It became frustrating and Michael found that patients had access to smartwatches and all the indicators captured on these devices going wasted. Patients used to fax ECG from apple watch to his clinic.
Vik agrees that it is absolutely after the fact medicine but we should be getting to more active caring of patients. Value-based care will incentivize prevention and wearables and value-based care align quite well.
Michael indicated that there is a huge return on investment for organizations that recommend wearables for employees. For example, 50% of the US population suffers from high blood pressure and if even lowered blood pressure for 10% of the population using wearables would be a huge benefit.
Vik brings up the point that there are massive amounts of data collected by wearables so how do you go about deciphering so much data and presenting it to the provider where it is actually useful.
Michael indicated in a perfect world, it would very useful to have a link in the EMR that would present him with all the data points from wearables. For example sleep time, exercise time, etc. Because a lot of times the information you get from patients is not accurate so from a provider perspective it just helps to see actual data points collected in the last few months to make informed decisions.
Michael, Vik, and Jimmy then dig into more details about wearable data points like heart rate variability and how they help a physician.
Next, they talk about the limitations of EHR and how the data presented in a standard EHR is not easy to use and there is usually way too much going on instead of presenting crucial data points in a visual manner.
The other huge advantage of wearables is provided personalized care for patients.
Vik then mentions the strategy they use for digital apps integration. Instead of traditional pushing data and duplicating data, it will be on-demand. Also, because of the Cures Act, it will open up data using APIs. Having FHIR APIs in the cloud, it will allow apps to access EHR data in real-time.
Website: http://www.thisweekinhealthtech.com
Twitter: @TWIHT1
Tido Inc.: https://www.tidoinc.com/
Guest Linkedin: Dr. Michael Farmer
Coverix Website: https://corverix.com/pages/wearables
Music Provided by Soundstripe.com
Linkedin: Vik Patel
Linkedin: Jimmy Kim
Listen to all This Week in Health Tech episodes
Vik Patel - LinkedIn
Tido Inc. - Website
Tido Inc. - LinkedIn