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Advocating for clinical wearables, the new normal in healthcare

Clinical wearables have the potential to streamline healthcare industry costs and operations worldwide cannot and should not be ignored.

clinical wearables

Wearables devices are poised to reshape the patient experience from hospital to home by creating a new normal that puts patients back in charge of their healthcare. This year, clinical-grade wearables will move beyond the experimental phase to begin the early stages of their impending explosion on the medical market, triggering the healthcare industry’s next paradigm shift as this technology continues to be adopted.

Through continuous monitoring, wearable devices have the potential to address population health issues on a global scale through more effective and efficient health management. From tracking vital signs to analyzing data to diagnosing and monitoring patients suffering from chronic diseases, medical-grade wearables are being developed with the aim to provide patients with the best possible outcome through real-time adjustments to care plans of varying complexities.

By offering physicians a new way to accurately measure vital signs and monitor physical activity on a consistent basis, clinical wearables have the opportunity to not only increase overall care quality but also decrease costs and lower the chance of adverse events in general care areas.

Physicians will feel more comfortable sending patients home for recovery, rather than admitting them to an outpatient, general care ward where they will incur unnecessary costs, as they will be able to keep a virtual eye on the patient at all times. In the United States, this type of “defensive medicine” costs an estimated $46 billion annually. By affording patients the freedom of going home to a comfortable and familiar setting, clinical wearables have the potential to not only improve a patient’s recovery outcome, but also cut spending on defensive medicine by guiding at-home patient care that connects them directly with clinicians, freeing up hospital beds for higher risk patients that may need closer attention.

Managing Chronic Conditions
Moreover, with chronic diseases representing 60% of all deaths worldwide, there is a clear need for a more direct and tangible approach to caring for these patients. Patients suffering from chronic diseases are at risk of developing a secondary or even tertiary health issue as a result of their pre-existing condition, which can make it difficult to coordinate a care plan that works alongside their daily routine.

For example, if a candidate for hip replacement surgery also has a history of diabetes, they require a care plan that addresses their increased risk for postoperative complications as a result of symptoms commonly associated with this surgery among diabetes patients. Rather than requiring regular therapy sessions alongside a time-consuming series of follow-ups to monitor their condition, clinical wearables can help track and analyze data to determine an ongoing care plan that fits their personal needs.

Clinical wearables also have the potential to monitor otherwise undetectable changes in patients, manifesting both behaviorally and physically. This will be especially useful for detecting a disease like Alzheimer’s, the most common form of dementia, whose symptoms progress gradually over time and significantly impact quality of life. Caught in earlier stages, patients with Alzheimer’s can undergo treatments to temporarily slow its worsening while using clinical wearables to monitor the disease for any changes that point to its progression into stages that require more aggressive treatment and surveillance.

Not only do clinical wearables have the potential to make a significant impact on a patient’s long-term quality of life, including their family’s well-being, but also on their physician’s ability to manage caring for multiple patients with complex medical needs.

Scalability of Clinical Wearables: Intention, Acceptance and Collaboration
As healthcare industry professionals, it is our responsibility to support and ensure global health best practices, including the deployment and implementation of new technologies that address longstanding population health challenges. We are tasked with deploying new healthcare tools and treatments, including clinical wearables, on a large scale, and must keep in mind that the introduction of a new normal will meet apprehension no matter the promise. The question is, how can we as an industry overcome apprehension in order to realize the potential clinical wearables have to change the state of healthcare?

There are three important factors to consider:

·       Intention – People are often skeptical of new technology and their possible disruption to workflow, especially in a healthcare setting. Purveyors of these solutions must promote the fact that connected sensing technology was designed with a deep understanding of ourselves, our unmet needs, and the ever-changing healthcare continuum – it is not an accidental aside to consumer technology.

·       Education – For clinical wearables to become a reality, both health systems and patients need to be on board. Once providers and payers fully understand and acknowledge the contribution clinical wearables could make to healthcare worldwide, they will be able to better educate their patients on how to use the technology for an easier, more comfortable experience.

·       Collaboration – Deploying clinical wearables on a larger scale requires a collaborative relationship between vendors, providers, payers and patients, where vendors deliver the vision and capabilities while providers, payers, and patients share direct feedback to inform their continued innovation.

With the above considerations in mind, our next step as an industry should be to create and implement a plan taking into account all parties involved—from development to routine use—for an environment that maximizes the benefits of clinical wearables on a global scale. With 2017 already under way, we must remain persistent and keep moving our initiative forward through education that demonstrates how this technology can lower patient costs, ease physician workloads, and put chronic disease sufferers back in control. Their potential to streamline healthcare industry costs and operations worldwide cannot and should not be ignored.

With 2018 looming in the not-too-distant future, we must remain persistent and keep moving our initiative forward through education that demonstrates how this technology can lower patient costs, ease physician workloads, and put chronic disease sufferers back in control. Clinical wearables have the potential to streamline healthcare industry costs and operations worldwide cannot and should not be ignored.

Photo: exdez, Getty Images


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Carla Kriwet

Carla Kriwet is Chief Business Leader of Philips Connected Care & Health Informatics (CCHI) cluster of businesses. She was appointed to this role in February 2017 and oversees the Patient Care & Monitoring Solutions (PCMS), Population Health Management and Healthcare Informatics businesses. Previously she led the Business Group PCMS. Prior to joining Philips in 2013 she was Chief Sales & Marketing Officer and Member of the Global Executive Board at Drägerwerk AG & Co KGaA, a German-based engineering and medical technology firm. Before that, she enjoyed multiple leadership roles at Linde AG, Germany, and was a Senior Principal at The Boston Consulting Group.

Carla graduated in Business Studies at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland. She holds a PhD in Inter- and intra-organizational knowledge transfer from the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland and University of Tokyo, Japan.

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