Digital medicine: are consumers ready for mobile check-ins and telemedicine?
In the field of digital medicine, many companies are working to redefine the way consumers interact with the health care system. The constant and steady growth in sales of wearable devices makes you wonder how to apply the data of all sensors, pedometers and heart rate monitors for medical purposes?
The American venture fund RockHealth , which invests in digital medicine projects, has decided to conduct a study on consumer acceptance of various categories of digital health. To do this, they interviewed more than 4,000 adult Americans who represent the entire population of the United States. It turned out that 12% of respondents are ready to use wearable gadgets for health control, 17% - to carry out mobile health monitoring. While telemedicine, consumers are still skeptical - only 7% are ready to use it.
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The reason for buying gadgets is basically the desire to be more active and lose weight. However, the hypothesis that wearable gadgets are mainly used by young people, healthy and active, can already be refuted. The first buyers and early followers were indeed generally healthy people, but recently people with health problems have been actively using gadgets - a third of new users of wearable devices were hospitalized during the previous year.
What is the use of smart gadgets for health control? Today, almost half of people control weight in their heads or on paper, a quarter - pressure, about 15% - sleep. Physical activity is the only parameter that is most actively monitored in mobile applications, probably because many modern smartphones support the pedometer function.
However, the spread of fitness trackers should soon increase the percentage of mobile health monitoring, especially parameters such as pulse and sleep.
In Russia, there are only about 0.5 million users of smart gadgets, and so far there are few reviews on their use. Researchers at Welltory conducted a survey among people suffering from the most common chronic problems for which wearing gadgets (and caring for a healthy lifestyle in general) is most relevant: suffering from insomnia, chronic stress and headaches. It turned out that the most active people behind all the parameters are watching people who are not sleeping at night, and most of all they are interested in monitoring the activity - more than half have pedometers. Obviously, people hope that sufficient activity during the day will help to fall asleep at night, which, of course, is consistent with science and common sense. But many people who are in chronic stress, paradoxically, poorly monitor their health (although perhaps this is the cause of stress?) Almost a third of them do not follow weight, pulse, or their activity, but a record 18 % regularly register their productivity - for example, in applications like RescueTime . Now the Welltory team is recruiting volunteers for a larger study using gadgets and tracking the results.
The problem for manufacturers of gadgets, as well as paid mobile health monitoring services, remains obvious: most users are not willing to shell out.
At the same time, more than half of the respondents admit their responsibility for health, and a third actively take care of it. But only 7% are ready to pay out of pocket for goods and services related to health. Although the miser pays twice: what is better - a couple of gadgets for several thousand rubles, the cost of a gym and a little time to record your indicators or expensive treatment in the future? Gadget makers and popularisers of a healthy lifestyle should be brought to the consumer: prevention is always better (and cheaper) than treatment.
The American venture fund RockHealth , which invests in digital medicine projects, has decided to conduct a study on consumer acceptance of various categories of digital health. To do this, they interviewed more than 4,000 adult Americans who represent the entire population of the United States. It turned out that 12% of respondents are ready to use wearable gadgets for health control, 17% - to carry out mobile health monitoring. While telemedicine, consumers are still skeptical - only 7% are ready to use it.
')
The reason for buying gadgets is basically the desire to be more active and lose weight. However, the hypothesis that wearable gadgets are mainly used by young people, healthy and active, can already be refuted. The first buyers and early followers were indeed generally healthy people, but recently people with health problems have been actively using gadgets - a third of new users of wearable devices were hospitalized during the previous year.
What is the use of smart gadgets for health control? Today, almost half of people control weight in their heads or on paper, a quarter - pressure, about 15% - sleep. Physical activity is the only parameter that is most actively monitored in mobile applications, probably because many modern smartphones support the pedometer function.
However, the spread of fitness trackers should soon increase the percentage of mobile health monitoring, especially parameters such as pulse and sleep.
In Russia, there are only about 0.5 million users of smart gadgets, and so far there are few reviews on their use. Researchers at Welltory conducted a survey among people suffering from the most common chronic problems for which wearing gadgets (and caring for a healthy lifestyle in general) is most relevant: suffering from insomnia, chronic stress and headaches. It turned out that the most active people behind all the parameters are watching people who are not sleeping at night, and most of all they are interested in monitoring the activity - more than half have pedometers. Obviously, people hope that sufficient activity during the day will help to fall asleep at night, which, of course, is consistent with science and common sense. But many people who are in chronic stress, paradoxically, poorly monitor their health (although perhaps this is the cause of stress?) Almost a third of them do not follow weight, pulse, or their activity, but a record 18 % regularly register their productivity - for example, in applications like RescueTime . Now the Welltory team is recruiting volunteers for a larger study using gadgets and tracking the results.
The problem for manufacturers of gadgets, as well as paid mobile health monitoring services, remains obvious: most users are not willing to shell out.
At the same time, more than half of the respondents admit their responsibility for health, and a third actively take care of it. But only 7% are ready to pay out of pocket for goods and services related to health. Although the miser pays twice: what is better - a couple of gadgets for several thousand rubles, the cost of a gym and a little time to record your indicators or expensive treatment in the future? Gadget makers and popularisers of a healthy lifestyle should be brought to the consumer: prevention is always better (and cheaper) than treatment.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/371955/
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