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Lots of people know they could be eating more greens, sleeping better, and getting in more cardio.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The problem is what to do with all that data now that people have real information about themselves, courtesy of wearable medical and health devices. And, moreover, identifying the exact behavior we need to change\u2014and then actually altering it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Patrick Sheehan, vice president of value-based care at intelligent health devices company Withings, said wearable devices that measure the user\u2019s health data have become \u201cthe cop on your wrist.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s an accountability driver,\u201d said Sheehan, who spoke at Fortune\u2019s Brainstorm Tech conference in Aspen this month. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t solve problems for you, but it tells you your problems.\u201d<\/p>\n
The whole market, added Sheehan, is stuck at this surface-level issue, naming problems instead of resolving them. The solution isn\u2019t another sensor attached to a different device.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe wearable paired with the action or an intervention is solving a problem,\u201d said Sheehan.<\/p>\n
Ann Crady Weiss, CEO and co-founder of Hatch, which builds bedside consumer devices for adults and babies to improve sleep, has observed the same issue up close.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cData, in and of itself, is interesting, but making it actionable is really, really important,\u201d she said. Getting someone to act, Crady Weiss argued, is just as much a problem of habit as much as it is technical.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She said Hatch\u2019s rivals for a bedtime audience aren\u2019t other sleep apps, but rather \u201cNetflix and TikTok.\u201d In her view, the way to resolve the issue is to get \u201csomeone interested and looking forward to taking care of themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nele Jessel, Chief Medical Officer at healthcare records data firm athenahealth, said the gap between data and what to do with it has to be the first step in a path to more empowered decision making about health.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cTurning data and information into knowledge is the first step,\u201d Jessel said, because on its own, \u201cdata and information is just that, it\u2019s random facts.\u201d The harder leap, Jessel said, is the one from knowing something to doing something about it, which is often where most consumer health tools stall.<\/p>\n
But knowing hardly ever equates to doing, which raises a further issue. If a device has already flagged a problem, whose job is it to fix the behavior underlying it?\u00a0<\/p>\n
Lisa Shah, chief medical officer of chronic conditions company Twin Health, argued the industry has been blaming the wrong party. The assumption that people don\u2019t care about their health, she said, is a bias her work has almost thoroughly debunked.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe biggest bias that\u2019s been busted for me is that the patients don\u2019t care about their health. That\u2019s garbage,\u201d said Shah. \u201cWhat they don\u2019t have is how.\u201d<\/p>\n
That \u201chow,\u201d she said, has to be tailored to a person\u2019s actual life. A sleep target that assumes a 9 p.m. bedtime isn\u2019t useful to shift workers, she noted.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat is a nurse going to do if I tell you to go to bed at 9:00 and that\u2019s when you start your shift?\u201d she questioned.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The fix, in her view, is to make the guidance specific, available at \u201cthe average sixth grade reading level,\u201d and small enough to actually stick.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s micro changes, guys,\u201d said Shah. The goal isn\u2019t a total reinvention of someone\u2019s habits, but a single realistic adjustment they\u2019ll keep.<\/p>\n
According to Sheehan however, the real change doesn\u2019t need to come from patients.<\/p>\n
\u201cPatients are not going to inherently change their behaviors,\u201d said Sheehan. \u201cI think it\u2019s physician behavior change.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Getting doctors and clinicians to act on the readings to screen for conditions and warning signs earlier, diagnose issues sooner, and adjust treatment based on data is key\u2014rather than letting the data pile up unused.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Jessel noted that doctors are often the bottleneck for a functional reason.\u00a0 Providers are often \u201cleery of being presented with data that they can do nothing about,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
For Othman Laraki, co-founder of virtual cancer clinic Color Health, the answer is a reward. Continuous glucose monitors work, he said, by \u201cgiving people a reward system for good behavior.\u201d That might be a quiet nudge to sleep earlier or skip a salty or sweet snack because the readout will expose it either way. Laraki said he learned that information the hard way about his own food choices.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI was very sad to see that Pho was one of them,\u201d he said, referring to foods that spiked his glucose level.<\/p>\n
Beyond wearables and health gadgets, inconsistencies and lack of access to getting medical care persist for large swaths of the population.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Jen Shepherd, who runs Uber Health, argued that the focus with tailored data misses where most people actually get hampered.<\/p>\n
\u201cInsights, and more insights, are wonderful, and we have more health insights now than we have ever,\u201d she said, \u201cbut honestly, the gap to access to care is so large.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The barriers that derail people from being more informed about their health are rooted in issues such as affordability, transportation, and food.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Those reasons are why \u201cone in five patients delay or miss appointments,\u201d she added. \u201cMe handing out wearables is not going to solve most of that problem,\u201d Shepherd said.<\/p>\n
For some patients, the data deficit is more fundamental. Heidi Davis, founder of perimenopause health company Peri, said the entire system was \u201cdesigned by men for men,\u201d leaving women with far less relevant health research and less-informed answers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When women do seek help, she said, \u201c70% of women that go and ask for help get no help and get sent home.\u201d For them, the value of data is that it\u2019s a bargaining chip.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHere\u2019s the data, now you can go in, you can advocate for yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
#Wearables #offer #tons #data #people #sleep #Netflix #TikTok<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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