Although doctors support wearable technology and believe it can enhance patient care, there are still major obstacles in the way of its inclusion into clinical practice.
A survey of over 2,000 doctors in six nations (the US, Canada, UK, France, Germany, and Spain) revealed that the majority of doctors (97%) reported reviewing wearable data in some capacity and that wearable data offer at least some clinical advantage for patient treatment. Just 3% of doctors claim to never examine this kind of information.
The most commonly reviewed data categories are broadly similar across countries: heart physiology, activity and function, biometric/physical events and alerts, and sleep.
The survey indicates that 74% of doctors outside of the United States and 77% of doctors in the United States believe wearable data has some clinical benefit.
According to a survey by Medscape and the American Medical Association's Center for Digital Health and AI, 82% of doctors really utilize wearables.
According to the study results, clinicians generally recognize the importance of data from activity trackers, smartwatches, and biosensors; nevertheless, structural obstacles more than a lack of motivation prevent extensive clinical integration, reports Heather Landi in Fierce Healthcare.
The study looked at how doctors use patient-generated wearable data, reimbursement, workflow issues, adoption factors, and faith in the validity of the data.
"What surprised me is that the technology is ahead of the healthcare system, not ahead of physicians," American Medical Association CEO John Whyte, M.D., told Fierce Healthcare. "The systems are not set up to maximize that data for clinical impact."
The data needs to be actionable and not just available, Whyte noted.
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The survey found that when patients ask their doctors to review wearable data, physicians typically act, with consistent responses across countries.
Although it differs by nation, wearable data integration into standard clinical practice is still somewhat limited. Less than 6% of doctors in all the nations under study already incorporate wearable data into their workflows.
Germany and Spain have the largest reported near-term pipelines of physicians ready to integrate these data, whereas fewer than one in five physicians in Canada or the United Kingdom indicated a high likelihood of integration in the next 12 months.
According to the paper, health tech businesses and manufacturers of medical devices must establish clinical credibility through proof. Specialty-stratified algorithm accuracy reports that compare each type of detection data to specified medical-grade standards should be published by medical device manufacturers.
For consumer wearable data, health IT businesses must adopt and support Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR)-based standards to facilitate consistent ingestion, according to AMA. In order to seamlessly integrate wearable data into physician workflows, health tech and EHR firms must develop features like auto-uploading confirmed data into the EHR in a structured format in place of "phone-based" review.
Additionally, bias checks should be incorporated into data standards by health tech vendors. For example, they should make it obvious where algorithms have been verified and where performance is unknown.
