During an executive session of the Payer Issues Roundtable hosted by Becker’s Hospital Review and sponsored by Fitbit Health Solutions, now part of Google, Joshua Stein, growth officer, and Kapil Parakh, MD, PhD, medical lead, both of Fitbit Health Solutions, facilitated a discussion that explored issues regarding clinical and cost effectiveness, trust in sharing data and the role wearables play in patient engagement.
Four key takeaways were:
- The segment of the population aged 65 or older is growing, and these individuals’ engagement with digital technologies is on par with younger individuals. “About 10,000 individuals are turning 65 every day and people over 65 are projected to grow to 80 million [in the U.S.] by 2030,” Mr. Stein said. According to a Google study, 92 percent of older Americans use a computer and 89 percent use a smartphone. A survey by AARP found among seniors who use a digital wearable device, 81 percent interact with it daily. “Older Americans are particularly interested in sleep, nutrition, exercise and mental health and stimulation,” he said.
- Early detection of potential risks related to heart health is of interest. Roughly 94 percent of Fitbit users said understanding their heart health and detecting heart conditions by monitoring heart metrics was of interest to them.
Roundtable participants noted that detecting medical conditions early could be valuable for payers and even for re-insurers. Technology solutions such as Fitbit’s irregular heart rhythm notification are promising and Dr. Parakh highlighted a paper in JAMA that suggests that these approaches are cost effective. The group agreed that there is still more research needed to definitely show an improvement in stroke outcomes with early detection of atrial fibrillation and identify the populations that would benefit the most from this technology.
- Trust plays a key role in older Americans’ willingness to share health information. “Within our value-based care programs for something like gap closure events, we find that we get more member traction when a letter [to the patient] is in the voice of the physician than when it’s from the voice of the payer,” a participant from a payer organization said.
Mr. Stein concurred that trust is a key variable, and the level of trust seems to be increasing. “As a part of the heart health study we conducted, more than 450,000 people opted in to share their [health] information,” he said. “We’ve found that consumers’ willingness to share information and utilize EHRs has significantly increased over time.”
- The value of data from wearable devices is greatest in the ongoing patient engagement with the healthcare system. “Individuals are walking into their clinicians’ offices as a result of additional information that they have at their disposal as a result of these wearables,” a participant said. Patients may receive a high heart rate notification, gain insights from sleep apps or be alerted to dangerous blood glucose levels with wearables. “I think the value of the wearables is communication engagement,” a participant said. “And any kind of engagement regarding personal health has the potential to be positive.”
Fitbit is working on this front as well, with both a wellness report to make it easier for users to share their data with healthcare providers, and a healthcare page built in partnership with the American Heart Association and American Academy of Sleep Medicine to make it easier for providers to understand the implications of Fitbit.
As more people grow older and experience health issues, wearables have the potential to play an important role in monitoring key markers of health, encouraging healthy habits and improving patients’ engagement with their health.
