Fourteen of the twenty-three best hospitals in the United States have already launched a pilot program using HelthKit from Apple or they are in talks to do so with the aim that doctors can control their patients remotely, thus lowering health costs.
HealthKit interests American healthcare
Healthcare technology developed by Apple It is rapidly spreading among major US hospitals as a way for physicians to monitor patients remotely and at lower costs.
The Reuters agency has contacted exclusively with the 23 best hospitals in the United States and 14 of them said they have launched a pilot program of the service Apple HealthKit or are in talks to do so. The goal of helping is to help physicians manage patients with chronic diseases such as diabetes and hypertension.
Apple It rivals Google and Samsung, which have launched similar services, but are only just beginning to reach hospitals.
These systems like HelthKit from Apple hold the promise of allowing physicians to observe the first signs of health problems in their chronic patients and thus be able to intervene before the medical problem worsens, which in turn could help hospitals avoid repeated admissions, for which they are penalized according to new US government guidelines, all at relatively low cost.
The U.S. healthcare market is worth $ 3 trillion, and the IDC Health Insights researcher predicts that 70% of healthcare organizations worldwide will invest in technology in 2018, including apps, wearables, and devices. remote monitoring and virtual attention.
These tests of the service Apple HealthKit they include at least eight of the top 17 hospitals on the US News & World Report Honor Ranking list. Google and Samsung also have started conversations but only with only some of these hospitals.
Apple HealthKit It works by collecting data from sources such as glucose measurement, food and exercise through tracking applications and WiFi connections. The Apple Watch, what will be released in april, could add new data to monitor that, with the consent of patients, can be sent to an electronic medical record so that doctors can follow and evaluate them.
The Ochsner Medical Center in New Orleans has already been working with Apple and Epic Systems launching a pilot program for high-risk patients. The team is already tracking several hundred patients who are struggling to control their blood pressure. The devices measure blood pressure and other statistics and send them to iPhones and iPads.
"If we had more data, like daily weights, we could give the patient a warning before they need to be hospitalized," said Chief Clinical Transformation Officer Dr. Richard Milani.
Sumit Rana, CTO of Epic Systems, said the time is right for mobile technology to take off in healthcare.
We didn't have smartphones ten years ago, nor an explosion of new sensors and devicessaid Rana.
Apple has said that more than 600 developers are integrating HealthKit into their health and fitness apps.
Apple has hired industry advisers, including Rana and John Halamka, chief information officer at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, to discuss the privacy of patient health data.
The company said it had an "incredible team" of health and fitness experts and was talking to medical institutions, healthcare institutions and industry experts about ways to offer their services.
Halamka of Beth Israel Hospital said many of the 250.000 patients in its system had data from sources like Jawbone or scales connected wirelessly.
«Can I interconnect to all the possible devices that each patient uses? No. However, Apple can, ”he said.
Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles is developing visual dashboards to present patient-generated data to physicians in an easy-to-analyze way.
Experts say the need will eventually arise for common standards to ensure that data can be collected by both Apple's HealthKit and its competitors.
How do we get that Apple work with Samsung? I think it will be a problem with time, said Brian Carter, director focused on population and personal health at Cerner, an electronic medical record provider that integrates with HealthKit.
SOURCE: access the full original news in English at to Reuters.
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