The connected patient is the killer app of the digital age. That was an observation shared by Deborah Kilpatrick, Evidation Health CEO, in a panel discussion on the state of digital medicine at the Digital Medicine Showcase during the J.P. Morgan Healthcare conference this week. There’s plenty of excitement about the long-term prospects of being able to effectively harness data from connected devices for the good of patients, physicians and insurance companies, but there is no shortage of questions on the practical considerations for doing this.
The rise of machine learning and other forms of artificial intelligence could make data generated by activity trackers and other wearables more manageable and give physicians a clearer view of their patients’ health between appointments. But on the flip side, healthcare facilities are trying to figure out the best ways to manage all that data.
The discussion, moderated by Lita Sands, inVentiv Health managing director for digital transformation, included Dr. Corey McCann, Pear Therapeutics CEO, Monique Levy, PatientsLikeMe head of customer strategy and value delivery and Dr. Kal Patel, Flex senior vice president of digital health. Patel has only been in the role a few months. He previously was Chief Commercial Officer with Doctor on Demand and designed and implemented Amgen’s digital health strategy.
One of the highlights of the talk was when Sands asked panelists for their take on the ability and the desire to fill the black hole of time between patients’ medical appointments with digital health data from patients.
“Wearables can fill in that time. But what about the willingness and ability for physicians to bring that data into patient care?” Sands asked.
Patel said he thinks physicians, to some extent, have been a forgotten piece of a lot of the digital health solutions being developed. He observed that this is one of the reasons why digital health solutions never get traction — because the people developing them are bypassing understanding physician workflows and system incentives.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
“Not a lot of physicians would say this publicly, but for a lot them it comes down to the economics of their time…Especially in primary care, they are trying to see a patient every six minutes and if you are doing anything that is adding to their work, that isn’t definitively taking away any work, there is a really high bar for that… People will start with the liability side and say you are setting up an expectation that you are giving me this data feed whether it is Fitbit data or it is medical-grade data or anything in between. And now you are setting up this expectation that I am looking at this data and will intervene if something doesn’t [look right]. And they are thinking about this from a malpractice side as well.”
Those comments aren’t exactly what one would expect to hear from the second largest electronics manufacturers, although Flex does do a considerable amount of business with medical device companies as well. I certainly look forward to hearing Patel get more involved in the digital health debates to come.
Photo: DrAfter123, Getty Images
