Docs unable to harness wearables data, survey finds
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Regulatory hurdles and the lack of insurer reimbursements are preventing doctors from harnessing data from consumer wearables to use in their practices, a new American Medical Association survey finds.
Why it matters: Structural barriers could thwart efforts to use continuous data from the devices to improve patient care.
- Wearables makers like Oura and Whoop may be consumer-focused businesses, but both want to be more integrated into health care systems.
Driving the news: A new survey of 2,222 physicians in the U.S., Canada and Europe found that cardiologists and endocrinologists were the likeliest specialties to use wearable data in their clinical care.
- But although 97% of the physicians said they'd review health information collected by a wearable, no more than 6% of the practitioners in any country had actually integrated data.
- In the U.S., more than 8 in 10 doctors use some sort of wearable device — and 77% said wearables could give them some advantage in caring for their patients, according to the survey from the AMA and Medscape.
What they're saying: "Physicians are interested in the data just as consumers are, and the challenge is the technology of health care system that don't have a way to incorporate it into physician workflow," John Whyte, CEO of the AMA, told Axios.
Zoom in: Doctors cited regulators' decision to not require clinical validation for many of the health-related features on the devices, the absence of tools for interpreting and integrating wearables data into workflows, and unclear liability frameworks.
- There are also no clear reimbursement mechanisms from insurers for using that data to guide care.
- If a patient reported that a wearable detected atrial fibrillation or sleep apnea, the doctor would probably just order tests, Whyte said.
Whyte said he'd like the ability to see a patients' heart rate variability, their blood pressure and their sleep scores over time to get a sense of their health trends.
- "I'm leaving so much data on the table that I could utilize," he said.
The bottom line: Although the tech industry is pulling records from providers into consumer apps, physicians can't integrate wearable data into electronic health records.
- With the explosion of AI in health care, doctors have more opportunities than ever to mine continuous data — but only if the broader system supports it, Whyte said.
