Dr. Joseph Kvedar has seen a few digital health efforts fail. As the director of Center for Connected Health at Partners HealthCare, he knows what pitfalls are waiting for new efforts to get people to track and change their health habits.
In a recent post on The cHealth Blog, he identified the three big challenges that Apple with have to overcome for HealthKit to be a success:
For me, it boils down to this: Will easy-to-use, intuitive, engaging software and beautifully designed hardware be enough to bring people into an environment like HealthKit and keep them there? Or will it take a killer app with analytics to drive personalization to keep people engaged (a la Netflix recommendations, Pandora’s predicting songs for you or Google knowing exactly what you’re searching for after only three keystrokes).
If you are listening Apple, here is what NOT to do with your new platform.
With the Rise of AI, What IP Disputes in Healthcare Are Likely to Emerge?
Munck Wilson Mandala Partner Greg Howison shared his perspective on some of the legal ramifications around AI, IP, connected devices and the data they generate, in response to emailed questions.
1. Please don’t think that a health data repository on a mobile device will be transformative. Google discontinued its health data repository and Microsoft’s has gotten very little use. We (society, health care experts, providers) have not given consumers/patients enough of a reason to make the effort to store all of their health data on one platform. People don’t feel compelled to take ownership of their health data. The only compelling use case is the traveler who gets ill and that just isn’t enough. Yes, HealthKit will make the collection of health data mobile and most likely passively captured. But overcoming these consumer barriers will not be enough to assure widespread adoption, I fear.
2. Please don’t make it just about seeing your doctor’s notes/lab data, etc., on your mobile device. This would be under-imagining the potential of this type of platform. I’m assuming that with the wave of wearables and Apple’s interest in health tracking, we will see heavy integration of patient-generated data. But, assuming is dangerous, so this is my explicit plea to Apple to do lots with patient-generated data, both collected via a device and self-reported.
3. Please do employ analytics on all of the data streams to feed insights to users in order to help us to improve our health. This seems obvious, but I worry. At the Center for Connected Health, we have accumulated lots of evidence that personalized engagement messaging is what will make something like HealthKit sticky over the long run. I don’t see evidence that Apple has done this.
Apple does OK at best, while companies like Google, Amazon, Netflix and Facebook live and die on their analytics ability. Other than iTunes, can you think of a software application that Apple created that is superior? Apple excels at many things, but any time they’ve been challenged to use analytics to target messaging and personalization, it has not gone so well. Just look at the example of Ping, Apple’s attempt at a social network, or how iTunes Radio stacks up to Pandora. We know there is no comparison to great machine learning as it pertains to keeping individuals engaged. I don’t see this as a core competency at Apple.
