Your Chair (and TV) is The New Doctor's Office: Welcome to ‘Care Everywhere’

Imagine Primary Care in Your Living Room

Imagine: You’re watching your favorite show on Netflix or ABC while sitting in your favorite new chair—you know, the one that is Bluetooth-enabled and automatically collects your ‘vital signs—’ like your blood pressure, heart rate and breathing pattern data, while real-time data are being transmitted to a large analytics platform which automatically triggers an alarm if your heart goes into a cardiac arrhythmia, which you were diagnosed with last month…

And imagine that, when any of your vital signs actually do fall outside of pre-set parameters, a nurse shows up on your TV asking if you are experiencing any shortness of breath or any chest pain. Which you aren’t at the moment (thankfully). And before she ‘rings-off’ she prompts you to take your medicines before bed, encourages you to go to your yoga class before work tomorrow, and tells you the weather forecast.

Imagine feeling less anxious about your heart condition because you are not alone in managing this serious problem. You have a partner who is helping you stay alive. You feel empowered.

Imagine a Future That is Here—Sorta

Does all this exist? Not yet. This chair is already here, along with basic telemetry (sending data into some sort of data hub). The real-time human interface with behavioral management is not here.

How far off is this futuristic story? Not far off at all if the Venture Capitalists (VC) have anything to do with it, and right now they have everything to do with it, spending a whopping $7.2 billion (B) in 2017-- a 42 percent increase from 2016.

Now, it is just a matter of time, attention and testing before the entire ‘Care Everywhere’ is in a chair, room, or car, near you.

‘Care Everywhere’ Democratizes Access

Imagine how such personalized technology could be used to provide greater connectivity to our senior citizens who live alone and don’t have family nearby, or how it could be used by our disabled citizens to provide on-demand physical therapy in their living room via interactive simulation sessions, or how it could reduce barriers to receiving behavioral health counseling because now people can have a virtual therapy visits with a chatbot during their during their lunch break. Just Imagine.

But Data Analytics Does Not Equal Care Everywhere

There is explosive growth happening in the field of ‘disruptive health technologies,’ yet much of it is  focused on health information management, generating data analytics, developing mobile health apps, and improving scheduling efficiency, according to research done by Mercom Capital Group. And this makes sense to focus here first—there are many inefficiencies within the delivery of health services which can be solved through advanced technologies.

Fewer of these emerging ‘smart’ technologies and interfaces are focused on improving individual’s daily health.  And this makes sense too given that to fully realize improvements in patient’s wellbeing outside of the ‘four walls’ of traditional healthcare a much different mindset and value proposition is required.

So while digital and mobile healthcare offers a future that is more flexible, more mobile—more everywhere—than today’s approach, if this is where the ‘revolution stops,’ then Digital Health has fallen very short of its larger promise. 

Moving from ‘Engaging’ to ‘Embracing’ Health

As famed microbiologist and sociologist Rene Dubos states in his book The Mirage of Health, the accomplishments of science and technology will not bring the Utopian dream of universal well-being because they ignore the dynamic process of adaptation to a constantly changing environment that everyone faces. Improving health requires ‘bridging’ between the technology and the individual’s environment. Included in one’s environment is one’s family, one’s work, one’s community, one’s values and, yes, one’s biology—this is the true definition of the ‘health ecosystem’…or as I call it, a ‘health eco-culture.’

Successful applications will ‘design for—’ and understand a person’s entire ecosystem, including accounting for individuals’ values and beliefs. Fulfilling this prerequisite is the difference between engaging the patient and having the patients embrace the behavior changes needed to realize improved health.

Creating an ‘Eco-Culture’ of Health Everywhere

Only when solutions are adaptable to suit an individual’s entire eco-culture will the promise of improved health (individual and population-based) be realized. Only then will these solutions realize the full embrace from patients.

And this becomes the difference between ‘Care Everywhere’ and ‘Health Everywhere,’  which is the true promise of Digital Health Disruption.

About the author: Recognized by LinkedIn as a "Top Voice" in Health Care in 2015 & 2106, & 2107, Julie Kliger is a Healthcare Social Realist who is passionate about improving health care and improving lives. She is a consultant, speaker and author. She specializes in healthcare thinking redesign, organizational strategy and change management.