A peek at the future of health gadgets
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Photo: Courtesy of HLTH
With just an image of your face and the help of artificial intelligence, a new iPhone app can tell you your heart rate, blood pressure, oxygen saturation and even whether you are getting enough sleep.
Why it matters: The app from FaceHeart Vitals was one in a slew of digital health devices on display at the HLTH conference in Las Vegas this week that offered a glimpse of how digital health companies are thinking about health care's biggest problems.
The big picture: AI still dominated the agenda and products.
- But this year the vast majority of companies and investors I spoke with focused on how AI could revolutionize the back office jobs of doctors and their administrative staffs — transcription, money management or scraping electronic health records for important bits of data — and took a far more cautious approach to its potential clinical applications.
- Remote patient monitoring, women's health and primary care were major themes at the conference that were reflected in the range of gadgets in the expo hall.
Many devices aimed to track patients' biometric data in real time.
- One of the latest consumer wearable devices tapped into the women's health trend: a pair of earrings from Incora Health that can track different health metrics, including internal body temperature, from the ear lobes.
- The earrings, which look like typical golden studs, aim to help women optimize their health and fitness based on what phase of their menstrual cycle they're in.
- Another tracker, from a company called Muse, uses technology that's been deployed in sleep clinics via a headband to help users train their brains for better focus and to improve their sleep quality.
- They work with doctor's offices and sell directly to consumers to provide biofeedback about one of the pillars of health that too often gets ignored, a spokesperson told me.
Between the lines: Perhaps more importantly there were also gadgets aimed at doctors.
- For instance, Eko Health demonstrated its Food and Drug Administration-cleared digital stethoscope that essentially puts an AI-powered EKG in the hands of primary care docs, giving them more real-time information about the condition of a patient's heart.
- The device is like a "Shazam for the heart," CEO Connor Landgraf said, referring to the app that can identify what songs are playing. "We need better tools for primary care to be in the driver seat," he said.
Our thought bubble: While many of the gadgets at a conference like this won't end up taking over the market, they give a glimpse of where health tech might be headed.
- The view from this year's event: AI and continuous data collection is going to be increasingly embedded into more of the patient's everyday experience.
