Changing Patient Behavior: How Data From Wearables And Sensors Will Transform Healthcare

By Joseph Frassica, MD, CMIO/CTO, Patient Care and Monitoring Solutions, Philips

Today’s wealth of innovation in wearables and sensors gives patients access to more data about their health than ever before. And while this access has increased patient engagement, it has yet to lead to a shift in overall patient behavior and persistent lifestyle changes that are necessary to affect long term outcomes. Part of this seeming disconnect is due to the fact that fitness data without context does not automatically translate to easily actionable positive behaviors for many patients.

Sustainable positive behavior change can only come through providing proper context and insight to the data created in the consumer space. This will require joining the growing body of fitness data with lifelong insights into wellness, disease progression and co-morbidities. This fusion will require the collaboration of both patients and their care provider to achieve maximal benefit. A motivated patient with an open channel to his physician that is knowledgeable about the patient’s condition and his personality, motivating factors and lifestyle will be an unbeatable combination to face off against chronic disease. The data from wearables is a great first step in this journey. Now we need tools to allow patients and providers access to immediate and understandable information created from this plethora of new data. Coupling this with tools for asynchronous secure communication between patient and provider will enable the patient’s understanding of how healthier life choices can impact his or her health, and will be the catalyst needed to truly change patient behavior.

Increased Communication Will Enable Engagement and Prevention
The first step toward making meaningful impact in patient behavior is simplifying the sharing of this new data stream from wearables and sensors between the patient and provider. These new data sources will provide clinicians and patients with a more complete view of the patient’s well-being than ever before. With this 360-degree view of the patient’s health, clinicians will be able to make faster, more responsive clinical decisions, outside of the regular office visit. This will also help clinicians determine the best information they need to share with their patients to help gain a better view into how behaviors can directly impact their health.

Take this for example – a patient with a heart condition may be wearing a sensor patch that could track and report important yet subtle changes in vital signs to his clinician. Subtle changes in physiology that might signal an escalation in his condition could be preemptively detected by the patient’s care team, triggering a phone call with medication advice or asking the patient to visit his doctor. Before the patient arrives for this appointment, clinicians would have access to up-to-the-minute information enabling faster and more responsive treatment and advice, perhaps preventing an unnecessary hospitalization. Once a critical episode is prevented, continued access to the patient’s data may allow clinicians to monitor progress, and provide timely intervention. As wearable and sensor technologies continue to evolve, providers may even be able to monitor patient vitals unobtrusively through a patient’s journey across the health continuum from high acuity to lower acuity care settings. This could significantly improve fragile patients’ quality of life by reducing hospitalizations due to preventable factors like medication dose changes.

The next step will require close attention to the patient as an individual, identifying what motivates him and what does not. Consistently monitoring diet and exercise, and making healthier lifestyle choices will require a shift in mindset for many patients. We know that with more frequent and direct access to pieces of a patient’s health information – cholesterol and sugar levels, heart rate, etc. – the patient will be in a better position to continuously track, and maintain healthy behavior.

Patient Demand Will Force Health Care’s Interoperability Hand
As patients begin to see more value in access to their medical data, they will also demand more information and analysis – something that requires data and systems to communicate and interoperate seamlessly across providers, vendors and geographies. This will allow clinicians to access patient data at their fingertips no matter where the patient is, making it possible to address patient needs regardless of other life factors, such as travel or schedule conflicts preventing a visit to the doctor’s office.

Achieving interoperability in practice has been a gradual process, but patient demand will drive faster adoption. As health care transitions toward becoming more patient-centric, the demand for more data will be directly connected with patient satisfaction, which in turn will push health systems and vendors to find interoperability solutions faster.

Over the past ten years, we have taken individual silos of small data within health care organizations and consolidated them into enterprise information systems. While this has been a great first step, the process has also created what could potentially be even larger silos of inaccessible data.

The good news is that we already have many of the technical capabilities to access patient data and use it across large organizations and geographies. We’re beginning to see positive changes, such as the ONC’s recent interoperability roadmap moving us in the right direction, but we’ve still got a ways to go. With the right incentives in place, we can enable a new level of connectivity in health care across the health continuum, and key stakeholders – providers and patients – can all work together to improve overall outcomes.