Status Reports and Hospital Referrals from Wearable Health Ecosystems

I recently began to discuss the emerging business models for wearable health ecosystems (WHEs). These ecosystems are home networks linking together a smartwatch, a smartphone with health apps, and various diagnostic devices such as a six-lead ECG (see:The Evolution of"Wearable Health Ecosystems" and Associated Partnerships). These interoperating devices, enabled by predictive analytics, will shortly be able to generate weekly health status reports and warnings, particularly when acute conditions are detected. This is a reality today in terms of the detection of atrial fibrillation (see:Atrial Fibrillation Detection With Wearable Devices).When urgent medical conditions are detected, the system will be able to generate a physician referral for urgent care and/or hospital admission. In view of this future scenario, the question now needs to be asked:to whom will such a report be directed in order to enable the appropriate response. I believe that PCPs, as the physicians responsible for allocating the lion's share of health system costs within health systems (see:PCPs Responsible for Allocating About 90% of Total Hospital Costs), will be the obvious recipients of these referral letters on a 24-hour basis. This triage function is identical to that of current PCPs employed by health systems. For those health consumers who don't own a WHEs, state-of-the-art health kiosks, perhaps in retail drug stores, can be used as a substitute (see:Improvements in Te...
Source: Lab Soft News - Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Tags: Cost of Healthcare Diagnostics Health Wearable Healthcare Information Technology Healthcare Innovations Medical Research Point-of-Care Testing Predictive Analytics Public Health Telemedicine Source Type: blogs