HIPAA-Compliant Tool Developed To Help Organize Data
By Christine Kern, contributing writer
A new tool launched by Nudge allows health professionals to analyze consumer data collected from health wearables.
Nudge, a mobile health fitness and app startup, recently launched Nudge Coach, a HIPAA-compliant tool designed to give health professionals the ability to analyze consumer data from health wearables by consolidating and organizing the data. The Nudge app is able to visualize data from popular health apps to provide simple feedback to motivate users to do more, and now the Nudge Coach can share that data with healthcare providers to allow them to engage users and propel them towards better overall health.
According to a press release, Nudge Coach “will be responsible for taking the wearable space to the next level by ensuring that wearables data is utilized more effectively, allowing for health professionals to provide tailored feedback to users.”
Using a web-based platform, the program retrieves and interprets health app data such as hydration levels, fitness levels, diet, and sleep patterns, and combines it into a single score, called the “Nudge Factor,” which provides a “detailed snap shot of a user’s overall health.” This will allow health professionals to quickly review the health data of a larger group of people more efficiently in order to intervene with advice and support when necessary.
There is also a private-messaging tool incorporated into the Nudge Coach, allowing healthcare providers to communication immediately with users to offer real-time feedback on results. Fully HIPAA-complaint, Nudge Coach also has the potential to substantially reduce health insurance costs for users by enabling healthcare professionals to guide their patients to better health over time.
“Nudge Coach is setting the precedent for how we should be utilizing our wearables data. We know that over a third of smartphone users are using mhealth apps and that number is supposed to exceed 50 percent by 2017,” said Nudge co-founders Mac Gambill and Phil Beene in the release. “By enabling that user information to be professionally analyzed it allows for a more useful and meaningful interaction with that very same data, which is infinitely more useful to the consumer.”
According to MedCity News, the founders initially said the company is targeting healthcare workers and not specifically physicians, although it has received interest from small practices and concierge practices.
“We are not targeting doctors per say, but we have spoken to doctors, especially those in small direct care or concierge medical practices, who are extremely interested in the way we present data,” MacGambill and Beene said in an email to MedCity News. “As this product matures we will continue to incorporate new data sets, including biometric data from various sources, and potentially extend our uniquely curated data into EMR in actionable ways for physicians.”