Mobile Health Readings

Focused on Mobile / IoT Tech in Healthcare

PWC’s The Wearable Future

PWC: located here

Report structured as sort of a survey over wearable tech hence everything here is “low level”.

Section 1: Executive Summary Section:

  • Enterprise has a “huge opportunity”
  • Wearables can increase loyalty & productivity and has many applications in enterprise
  • Wearables need to be “anchored in human centered design”
  • Need to be part of an ecosystem to provide value
  • Can change advertising and of course healthcare and generally media presentation
  • Can be used in workforce training & productivity
  • Wearable tech needs to be prescriptive to be useful
  • Privacy/Security & Price point are main concerns
  • There is vast opportunity : their examples are stress reduction, strengthened family connections, improving personal accountability, improved customer service

Section 2: Wearable Worlds (Dystopia or Utopia): Provides two alternate stories

Section 3: Wearables at a crossroad:

  • Wearable tech products have currently underdelivered - they believe the Apple Watch should be better.
  • Better adoption than a tablet
  • Wearables attached to phone rather than independent.

Section 4: Research Methodology:

  • Worked with BAV Consulting (leader in brands/customer research)
  • (Define) Wearable Tech = “Clothing and accessories incorporating computer and advanced electronic technologies”
  • They talked to Panelists, brainstormed and samples 1k consumers of Census National Representation

*Section 5: Snapshot of the Wearable Future *:

  • Statistics and usecases, pretty pictures are nice

*Section 6: Where wearable tech stands today *: Gives some gender-specific results/example wearables

Section 7: The Business of Wearables:

  • Can be used to differentiate brands.
    • Virgin Airlines using Google Glass for alerting staff of important customers
    • Provide context relevant content while considering a product.
    • People are more excited for wearables from tech brands.
  • Uses in retail and entertainment are popular

Section 8: Consumers and Wearables:

  • Ambivalence rules wearables right now
  • Current Mood: We have data… but what do we do with it?
  • Wearables can either be primary or secondary devices - is it independent of a smartphone?
  • The real opportunity is “addressing unmet needs”
    • Secondary possiblity: Directing goal-directed behavior, and info overload filtering
  • Privacy iss till a concern
  • Hitachi has made a communication habit & energy level detecting employee badge!

Section 9: What’s next? Recaps the need to embrace tech as a business.

Questions/Points:

  • The Wearable Utopia/Dystopia was a great juxtaposition.
  • “Super data” > Big data. this terminology is funny
  • Pg 11 says B2B market will be revolutionized … but how
  • Why the Apple bias?
  • What do they mean by Census National representation (pg 14).: As in a statistically Representative group?
  • Ambivalence rules wearables right now
  • Current Mood: We have data… but what do we do with it?

Perspectives on pervasive health from some of the field’s leading researchers

Dey et al (2011)

Question Being Answered: What is pervasive health and what’s happening in it?

One sentence answer: Collated opinions - no summary

“Low Level” Notes:

What is Pervasive Health?

  • Application of pervasive computing tech for healthcare/health
  • Making healthcare available everywhere/everytime
  • Using ubicomp tech to increase medical knowledge / contribute to healthcare delivery
  • Convergence of personal devices, sensing, embedded computing to advance healthcare quality

Example Projects:

  • Mining reality to collect “honest” signals
  • Social signals can assess behavior diseases (e.g. obesity)
  • Continuous sedentary activity type detection
  • Mobile phone weight lost intervention tool using JIT feedback and persuasive theories
  • FitBaby, connecting parents with clinicians and documentation of daily premature-infant living
  • Detection of pressure ulcers

They conclude that the area is is a burgeoning research area and they “expect … [smartphones] .. will be a dominant research and consumer platform for pervasive health” and mention some challenges, e.g. low power, sophisticated sensing, balancing privacy concerns, and treating “in clinically valid ways”.

Questions I have:

Particularly Interesting Phrases/Points:

Can Mobile Health Tech Transform Health Care?

Steinhubl et al (2013) [PubMed]

Question Being Answered: Can Mobile Health Tech Transform Healthcare?

One sentence answer: The potential exists but there are obstacles

“Low Level” Notes:

  • 3 powerful drivers:
    1. Unsustainability of current healthcare spending
    2. Rapid growth of wireless connectivity (>3.2b mobile users)
    3. Need for personalized medicine
  • Obstacles:
    1. Current health care system complexities & reimbursement incentives
    2. Low quality apps (potentially harmful)
  • Possible Use cases now:
    • self - Diagnosing acute symptoms (34% of visits are b/c of acute symptoms. e.g. Viral respiratory tract infections)
    • Recording biometric info
    • Better control chronic issues ( > 50% of US has >= 1 chronic condition - 90% of spending)
      • Hypertension (1/3 adults, 40m office visits, $93b costs): possible improvements: Home monitoring & Blood Pressure Cuffs.

All of these can reduce # of doctor visits. Move general doctor time to patients that need it rather than general algorithmic visits.

Questions I have:

  • Self diagnosing is generally a contentious point!
  • Otitis Media? : Middle ear inflammatory disease family

Particularly Interesting Phrases/Points:

Written on January 14, 2016