February 22, 2023 – Have you noticed that most people checking their watches aren’t looking for the time, but rather, for the number of steps they’ve taken today? The fact that so many people – an estimated 45% of Americans – wear fitness trackers has given rise to the term “quantified self.” There’s even a nonprofit based in the San Francisco Bay area called Quantified Self, whose tagline is “Self-knowledge through numbers.”
To date, consumers, employers and health plans have been responsible for driving much of the adoption of wearables and health apps, like fitness trackers. But it remains to be seen how – or if – physicians will jump in.
Wearables range from Fitbits, AppleWatches and Galaxy Fits, to more sophisticated devices that collect information on blood pressure, glucose levels, oxygen levels and gastrointestinal issues. In fact, health apps are increasingly focused on health condition management rather than wellness management, with the former accounting for 47% of all apps in 2020, up from 28% in 2015, according to the research firm IQVIA Institute for Human Data Science. Mental health, diabetes and cardiovascular disease-related apps accounted for almost half of disease-specific apps in 2020.
Wearable health devices offer several benefits to users and healthcare providers, according to researchers from Cornell University in 2020:
- They offer a convenient way to monitor, store and share health information in real-time.
- They provide feedback to users to make appropriate changes to their daily routines or behavior.
- They can facilitate remote patient monitoring and provide proactive and faster data access to physicians.
- They can be particularly useful for patients with chronic conditions, patients with cardiovascular risks, and elderly populations.
Working with a mobile health app platform in Asia, the researchers monitored health activities (e.g., exercise, sleep, food intake) and blood glucose values of 1,070 diabetes patients over several months. They found the adoption of the mobile health app led to improvements in health behavior, reductions in blood glucose and glycated hemoglobin levels, and fewer hospital visits and lower medical expenses. Patients who used the app undertook more exercise, consumed healthier food, walked more steps and slept for longer periods of time, and they were more likely to substitute offline visits with telehealth visits.
Read more in the latest issue of The Journal of Healthcare Contracting.