What You Should Know: 

– Osso VR, the leader in immersive procedural training launches Osso Health, a medical training app designed for Apple Vision Pro.  

– Now available on the App Store, Osso Health leverages the power of Apple Vision Pro to create an optimized learning experience for healthcare professionals and patients alike.

Bringing the Operating Room to Life

Osso Health seamlessly blends digital content with the physical world, transporting users into a realistic surgical environment. This is achieved by utilizing detailed, clinically accurate workflows of common procedures, allowing learners to visualize and interact with these procedures in a way never before possible. The app utilizes detailed, clinically accurate workflows for common procedures, allowing users to virtually walk through each step.

Democratizing Procedural Education

The launch of Osso Health marks a significant milestone in making procedural education more accessible.  Previously, this type of training was often limited to medical schools and simulation labs. 

Now, Osso Health empowers a wider audience:

• Healthcare professionals: Medical students, residents, and practicing physicians can access on-demand, hands-on learning from anywhere.
• Patients: Individuals preparing for surgery can gain valuable insights into the procedures they will undergo, reducing anxiety and promoting informed decision-making.
• Medical Enthusiasts: Anyone interested in medical innovation can explore the intricacies of surgical procedures in a safe and controlled environment.

Immersive Learning with Apple Vision Pro

Osso Health takes full advantage of Apple Vision Pro’s advanced features. The app utilizes a brand-new three-dimensional user interface and input system, controlled entirely by the user’s eyes, hands, and voice. This intuitive approach allows users to explore procedures seamlessly and effectively.

Initial Focus on Orthopedic Procedures

Currently, Osso Health focuses on two common orthopedic procedures: Carpal Tunnel Release and Total Knee Replacement.  Users can walk through these procedures step-by-step using Apple Vision Pro’s spatial computing technology. This allows learners to explore complex medical procedures in a realistic, secure, and contextually relevant setting.

“Osso Health for Apple Vision Pro opens up exciting possibilities for the future of immersive procedural education,” said Justin Barad, MD, Co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer at Osso VR. ”Apple Vision Pro unlocks new opportunities to scale spatial computing in healthcare with groundbreaking display quality and virtually lag-free learning experience, helping solve important challenges to education in healthcare.”

What You Should Know:

– eXeX, a leader in artificial intelligence-enhanced surgical logistics software, has achieved a historic milestone by successfully incorporating the Apple Vision Pro spatial computing headset in a Reverse Total Shoulder Arthroplasty.

– The historic procedure, conducted by Dr. G. Russell Huffman, MD, MPH of Rothman Orthopaedic Institute, took place at AdventHealth Surgery Center Innovation Tower in Orlando, Florida.

Surgical Optimization Platform Integration with Apple Vision Pro

eXeX played a pivotal role by providing their software platform that seamlessly integrated with the Vision Pro headset. The eXeX platform offers significant benefits for surgical teams:

• Holographic access: Surgical technicians can view holographic information about the surgical setup, inventory, and procedural guides within the sterile field.
• Improved Efficiency: Streamlined workflow and equipment management contribute to faster surgery times and potentially better patient outcomes.
• Touch-free interaction: The software allows for interaction without compromising sterility.

A key challenge overcome in this surgery was the need to work within a protective system that previously limited the use of mixed reality headsets. The Apple Vision Pro proved to be the solution, integrating seamlessly under the hood and enabling the scrub technician to utilize the eXeX software effectively.

Impact

This successful surgery sets a new benchmark for technological innovation in surgery. It demonstrates the potential of AI and spatial computing to improve surgical efficiency, accuracy, and ultimately, patient outcomes.

 “This achievement is not just a milestone for eXeX but a leap forward for the entire medical industry. Our successful use of the AppleVision Pro and the eXeX software in such a complex environment underscores our commitment to pushing the boundaries of what is possible in surgical procedures and patient care,” said Dr. Huffman.

What You Should Know:

• Cromwell Hospital has become the first hospital in the UK and Europe to use the Apple Vision Pro, a spatial computing device, as a surgical logistics and organizational tool. 
• Introduced to the hospital by eXeX, a leader in artificial intelligence and spatial computing for surgical organization and workflow optimization, surgeons Mr. Fady Sedra and Mr. Syed Aftab, part of the Complex Spine group who operate out of Cromwell Hospital, used the technology to successfully perform two microsurgical spine procedures.

Revolutionizing Surgical Procedures: Cromwell Hospital and eXeX’s AI Integration

In 2023, Cromwell Hospital partnered with eXeX to integrate AI and Spatial Computing tech in operating theatres, optimizing surgical procedures like equipment setup and inventory control. eXeX’s software enables touch-free access to setup details and procedural guides within the sterile field, enhancing surgical efficiency and improving patient outcomes. Surgeries by Mr. Sedra and Aftab using Apple Vision Pro highlight eXeX’s software adaptability and commitment to hardware-agnostic solutions.

Mr Syed Aftab, Consultant Orthopaedic Spinal Surgeon, said, “Working with eXeX to use the Apple Vision Pro has made a huge difference to the way we deliver care to our patients. The software is seamless and has improved efficiency within the Complex Spine team. It’s a real privilege to be the first team in the UK and Europe to use this software within surgery, and I’m looking forward to seeing how this technology advances and the impact it can have across hospitals in the UK.”

What You Should Know:

– TRIPP, the award-winning wellness company, announces its arrival on the highly anticipated Apple Vision Pro, redefining the boundaries of personalized well-being experiences.

– The integration with Apple Vision Pro unlocks TRIPP’s most immersive and visually captivating journey yet, seamlessly blending awe-inspiring worldscapes with users’ surroundings through Apple Vision Pro’s groundbreaking spatial computing capabilities.

Reimagining Wellness with Apple Vision Pro

• Enhanced Visuals: TRIPP’s already mesmerizing worldscapes are now rendered in stunning high resolution, amplifying the immersive effect and transporting users to new realms of wonder.
• Spatial Blending: Apple Vision Pro’s unique capabilities seamlessly integrate TRIPP’s content with the user’s physical environment, blurring the lines between reality and digital worlds.
• Personalized Journeys: This innovative technology allows for even more tailored experiences, with elements adapting to the user’s surroundings and preferences.

Beyond Visualization: A Holistic Approach to Well-being

TRIPP’s success goes beyond stunning visuals. It combines:

• Awe-inspiring worldscapes: Designed to evoke feelings of wonder and tranquility.
• Binaural sound frequencies: Precisely crafted soundscapes enhance immersion and guide the user’s experience.
• AI-powered breath detection: Real-time feedback helps users deepen their breathing and manage stress.
• Gamification: Fun and engaging elements motivate users to stay on track with their wellness goals.
• Mindfulness structures: Guided meditations and exercises promote relaxation and focus.

VR Experience Enagement

Unlike many VR experiences, TRIPP’s active users demonstrate remarkable engagement, with 43% returning 2-3 times a week. Additionally, its user base boasts a diverse demographic, with 57% male and 43% female users worldwide, showcasing its ability to cater to various needs and preferences.

“Bringing TRIPP to Apple Vision Pro exemplifies our dedication to pioneering cutting-edge technology for next-generation wellness solutions,” said Nanea Reeves, Founder and CEO at TRIPP. “With Apple Vision Pro, users will not only see a major visual upgrade across all our immersive worldscapes, but it will set the stage for a whole new generation of TRIPP.”

What You Should Know:

– Cedars-Sinai clinicians have teamed up with AI experts to develop an AI-powered VR therapy app, Xaia, that leverages the power of Apple Vision Pro to offer an immersive, accessible approach to mental health support.

– By harnessing the power of AI and virtual reality, the app offers a convenient, engaging, and effective way for individuals to manage their mental well-being. As technology continues to evolve, apps like Xaia hold immense potential to democratize access to quality care and empower individuals to prioritize their mental health.

AI Meets Virtual Reality

Xaia offers patients a self-administered, AI-driven therapy experience within the calming environment of virtual reality. Imagine yourself in a serene meadow by a babbling brook or on a sun-drenched beach, guided by a friendly AI avatar trained to mimic a human therapist. This immersive setting allows users to engage in deep breathing exercises, meditation, and personalized conversations designed to address their mental health needs.

From Research to Reality: A Transformative Step

Dr. Omer Liran, a psychiatrist at Cedars-Sinai and co-founder of Xaia, emphasizes the app’s potential to revolutionize mental health accessibility: “Xaia represents a transformative step in making quality therapy accessible to all.”

The app’s development is backed by extensive research. A groundbreaking study published in Nature Digital Medicine demonstrated the app’s effectiveness and safety for patient use. This research, coupled with Cedars-Sinai’s Technology Ventures program, paved the way for bringing Xaia to life.

While Xaia is not intended to replace traditional therapy, it has the potential to reach individuals who might otherwise struggle to access mental healthcare.

“Apple Vision Pro offers a gateway into Xaia’s world of immersive, interactive behavioral health support—making strides that I can only describe as a quantum leap beyond previous technologies,” said Brennan Spiegel, MD, MSHS, professor of Medicine, director of Health Services Research at Cedars-Sinai and co-founder of the Xaia technology. “With Xaia and the stunning display in Apple Vision Pro, we are able to leverage every pixel of that remarkable resolution and the full spectrum of vivid colors to craft a form of immersive therapy that’s engaging and deeply personal.”

What You Should Know:

• Researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai found that applying machine learning models to data collected passively from wearable devices can identify a patient’s degree of resilience and well-being. The study, published in JAMIA Open, supports the use of wearable devices, such as the Apple Watch, to monitor and assess psychological states remotely.
• The researchers note that mental health disorders account for 13 percent of the burden of global disease and that there are disparities in access to mental health care. Therefore, a better understanding of who is at psychological risk and improved means of tracking the impact of psychological interventions are needed. Wearable devices could provide an opportunity to improve access to mental health services for all people. “Wearables provide a means to continually collect information about an individual’s physical state. Our results provide insight into the feasibility of assessing psychological characteristics from this passively collected data,” said first author Robert P. Hirten, MD, Clinical Director, Hasso Plattner Institute for Digital Health at Mount Sinai. “To our knowledge, this is the first study to evaluate whether resilience, a key mental health feature, can be evaluated from devices such as the Apple Watch.”
• The study analyzed data from the Warrior Watch Study, which comprised 329 healthcare workers in New York City who wore an Apple Watch Series 4 or 5 and completed surveys on resilience, optimism, and emotional support. The metrics collected were predictive in identifying resilience or well-being states, supporting the further assessment of psychological characteristics from passively collected wearable data. The researchers intend to evaluate this technique in other patient populations to improve its applicability.
• In essence, the study highlights the potential for wearable devices and machine learning models to monitor and assess psychological states remotely, improving access to mental health services for all people. Further research is needed to refine the algorithm and improve its applicability in a range of physical and psychological disorders and diseases.

Though we seldom see their use in our modern world and, even then, only in fiction, there was a time when it was common for people to actually use things like crystal balls and divining rods to try to uncover unknown yet valuable information. As unbelievable as it may seem, soothsayers peered into crystal balls aiming to help seekers look into the future for guidance, while prospectors would rely earnestly on divining rods as they attempted to locate underground riches of water or oil.

While we may still entertain such images in some of the literature, TV, and movie fantasies we enjoy, in our modern professional world, we tend to entrust industry predictions to those with real, practical knowledge of the business landscape, because they trek, mine, and drill there regularly.

The world of medtech is no different, and for me and my team, connected care is the ground we travel, excavate, and explore on a daily basis. As we venture further into 2023, here’s our perspective on some of the connected care trends we expect to see on the road ahead, from digital therapeutics to remote patient monitoring and clinical trial management.

Precision engagement is an emerging development within digital therapeutics

One of the fast-growing categories within medicine today is digital therapeutics (DTx), which is the delivery of evidence-based treatment through digital solutions that help prevent, manage, or treat a disorder or disease. One recent report valued the global DTx market at $4.2 billion in 2021 and predicted it would expand at a compound annual growth rate of 26.1% between 2022 and 2030, with other estimates projecting even faster growth.

Within DTx, the emergence of precision engagement is a development that holds great promise, especially for chronic conditions where day-to-day choices and behaviors have a significant impact on health outcomes—conditions like diabetes, obesity, and hypertension.

While remote patient monitoring is clearly important for giving care teams visibility into the management of a patient’s condition in order to facilitate vital provider interventions, those living with chronic conditions requiring day-to-day management must also make dozens of additional decisions every day. But initiating provider interventions for all of these would simply not be possible nor even desirable. With diabetes, for example, these can range from food and exercise choices to the need to take medications or interact with a medical device, like a glucose monitor or an insulin pen or pump.

Enter precision engagement. Just as precision medicine can utilize a patient’s genetics or metabolic profile to uniquely fine-tune the dosing of a drug to an individual, precision engagement—with the help of AI and machine learning—can be used by digital health developers and physicians to program connected care platforms to issue electronic interventions or “nudges” that are uniquely tailored and helpful to the individual patient.

These digital nudges prompt a patient to take necessary actions throughout the day that are not only personalized to their needs but delivered in a way that is consistent with their lifestyle and preferences, leading to a better likelihood of engaging the patient and, ultimately, guiding them to better health outcomes. These digital interventions are known in behavioral medicine as just-in-time adaptive interventions or JITAI, and they are helping healthcare professionals use software to precisely engage the right patients with the right interventions at the right time.

With precision engagement, these solutions programmed into connected care platforms are able to digitally “learn” about an individual patient’s preferences from their responses to questions and from the daily decisions they make in their self-management as they engage with the platform’s corresponding app. This learning enables the software to personalize future digital nudges for the patient.

Precision engagement software might be used, then, to help identify the right moment of the day to generate a nudge, like suggesting the patient eat an apple or take a walk at a specific time of day because that’s when the individual is most receptive to such a suggestion.

Or, a digital nudge might involve time- or activity-triggered reminders, such as the need to take medication or to sync the patient’s medical device to the connected-care platform. It might even send the patient an encouraging message prompted by their reaching of a daily target, such as meeting a specific exercise goal.

Precision engagement can even tailor the type of communication used for nudges, from the use of a pop-up message or the suggestion of a video or article to the kind of voice used—maybe through empathy or even humor—to deliver the nudge. 

Precision engagement is one of the most exciting new developments within digital therapeutics, using digital health tools to deliver highly personalized, time-adaptive interventions in ways that lead to positive behavior change, extraordinary patient experiences, and improved health outcomes.

The need for greater RPM awareness is resulting in a measured pace of adoption

While necessity may have forced the issue for care teams during the pandemic regarding the adoption of telemedicine appointments, it turns out that remote patient monitoring (RPM) is still “one component of telehealth that has lagged,” according to the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA). In a Stat poll of 586 healthcare leaders taken by MGMA last year, the association found that 75% of medical practices had yet to offer RPM services.

Despite patients’ positive perspectives of RPM, demonstrated outcomes, payor recognition of RPM’s value, and the establishment of reimbursement mechanisms, the actual pace of RPM adoption has turned out to be more deliberate than these factors had originally led many to predict. In fact, in our work, we’ve found that a large part of preparing providers to make the actual leap to RPM adoption has really been a challenge of growing awareness.

For one thing, we’ve found that in the busy world of providing clinical care, some providers simply haven’t gotten a complete understanding of what RPM reimbursement looks like. So, we continue to chip away at the task of making sure our provider partners have the latest information.

And while some may have caught wind of RPM reimbursement, we’re coming across other providers who have the misconception that only Medicare reimburses for RPM. In reality, there are dozens of private payors covering RPM, with some reimbursing at even higher levels than Medicare. 

Another misconception we encounter among some providers is the mistaken belief that, to get reimbursement for RPM, they must implement every piece of it all at once, from getting patients set up and syncing their data to analyzing the data and providing patient consults. Not only is that not true, but the idea of such a weighty burden is partly why CMS has assigned unique CPT codes for discrete RPM activities. For many providers, implementing RPM is such a significant change management challenge that it actually makes the most sense for them to start small, which they can do by getting patients set up and focusing them on simply sharing their data remotely on a monthly basis. With that, providers can begin submitting for reimbursement, then build from there.

One of the most useful steps for providers unsure of where to begin is to find a reliable partner who specializes in RPM planning and implementation. Resources like AMA’s recently published 12-step RPM Playbook can help, as it covers every stage of establishing a fully operational RPM program.

Pandemic-induced use of decentralized clinical trials provided an up-close view of their efficiencies and is leading to increased adoption

Decentralized clinical trials (DCTs) are trials in which some or all study assessments are conducted at locations other than the investigator site via either tele-visits, mobile or local healthcare providers, local labs and imaging centers, home-delivered investigational products and/or mobile technologies. During the pandemic, when thousands of non-COVID trials—some 80%—were interrupted, virtual trial companies experienced an explosion in demand.

And if market projections are any indicator, demand for DCTs will continue to increase, with an analysis issued earlier this year projecting the global DCT market will grow from $6.1 billion in 2020 to nearly $16.3 billion in 2027.

While the need for social distancing that precipitated the sharp uptick in DCT demand may have subsided from its peak during the pandemic, it’s clear that continued demand for DCTs will be driven primarily by the efficiencies of the model that researchers witnessed first-hand during the pandemic.

One of the biggest advantages of DCTs is how they boost trial enrollment, as they often allow for patients to sign up and participate from home via remote monitoring. Remote participation opens trials and the benefits they provide to those living outside urban centers, which means the trend toward DCTs is also broadening the number and diversity of eligible enrollees.

DCTs can also reduce patient dropout rates and speed up study timelines, two of biggest challenges in life sciences R&D. And they help researchers realize significant cost savings from decreases in the number of physical trial sites and reductions in research staff and travel.

Driven by this wide range of efficiencies benefiting subjects, researchers, and study sponsors, it’s expected the demand for DCTs will continue to ramp this year and in the future.

Overall, we expect 2023 to be a year where our prospecting and development efforts in the connected care landscape will continue producing exciting advancements that will enable us to better support patients living with chronic conditions as well as the physicians and teams who care for them.

About Russ Johannesson

Russ Johannesson is Chief Executive Officer at Glooko, a leading provider of connected care, patient engagement, digital therapeutics, and clinical trial optimization. Deployed in over 30 countries and 8,000 clinical locations, Glooko’s mission is to improve the lives of people with chronic conditions by connecting them with their caregivers and equipping both with digital health technology for improved outcomes.

What You Should Know:

• LifeOmic, a healthcare technology company powering precision health with its end-to-end software solution, the LifeOmic Platform, today announced the launch of its Patient Mobile App. LifeOmic’s Patient Mobile App enables the two-way connection between the healthcare team and patient. 
• With the LifeOmic Patient Mobile App, healthcare providers have access to a highly configurable solution that integrates directly into their existingworkflows to meet their unique needs.

Ushering in an Environment For Personalized Care 

The growth of mobile health, which is estimated to reach $12.1 billion by 2030, is one of the most promising trends in the healthcare industry due to its capacity to support, educate and connect patients to their care teams between office visits.However, there is a tremendous gap between medical professionals and patients due to the plethora of siloed mobile health apps available within the market. LifeOmic aims to solve this problem by providing healthcare systems and providers with the ideal solution for proactively and holistically managing patient outcomes without adding a burden to the care team. 

“Healthcare providers face two challenges — engaging patients without overwhelming staff and managing multiple apps within a system,” said Dr. Don Brown, CEO and founder of LifeOmic. “LifeOmic addresses both by providing a secure, scalable solution that integrates with patients’ records and collects data from various sources. By surfacing issues that need attention, LifeOmic streamlines proactive management without increasing staff workload.” 

The LifeOmic Patient Mobile App was designed to be the hub for all connection points. The app can be configured for different audiences and use cases—so whether it is used for remote patient monitoring, patient adherence, patient education or research, the app is flexibly designed to offer two-way communication. This enables LifeOmic to empower health systems and providers to improve patient outcomes via patient monitoring and reduce readmissions and visits to the emergency department through the valuable insights gained by leveraging patient-reported data. 

With The LifeOmic Patient Mobile App, health systems and healthcare providers can: 

● Incorporate organization’s name and branding

● Easily gather patient eConsent

● Configure the app layout to integrate with other sites and apps

● Deliver multimedia content for extended learning (video, articles, audio, flashcard content)

● Create daily patient tasks

● Gather patient-reported information from surveys

● Add video conversations; either 1:1 or group sessions.

● Configure a chatbot to process and understand patient questions

● Connect to wearables (e.g., Fitbit, Apple and Google)

● Integrate with medical devices (e.g., Dexcom CGM) 

● Use alerts and dashboards to proactively monitor patients’ health

By integrating into patient clinical records such as Epic, Cerner and Cerbo and wearable device data, the LifeOmic Patient Mobile App allows for easy electronic patient-reported outcomes (ePROs) collection to create a better patient experience while helping surface issues that need attention from staff. The app also enables patient connection between office visits, providing the necessary education and support to understand their conditions, play active roles in self-care and reduce the likelihood of complications. Provided by the healthcare system or provider, the app is completely free to the patient.

All data acquired from the app is stored in the secure LifeOmic Platform. Both the LifeOmic Platform and the app maintain the highest level of security and are HIPAA-compliant, GDPR-compliant and HITRUST certified. 

The good news on the medical front is that with advances in therapy, people with chronic diseases are able to remain in their homes and even live active lifestyles, which improves their quality of life and can save them, the government (Medicaid/Medicaid), and the insurance industry money. But — and it’s a big one — those savings can only be achieved if those patients adhere to their medication schedules.

Non-adherence first came to the forefront of awareness back in 2009, when the New England Healthcare Institute (NEHI) issued a report that found that failing to take medications as prescribed leads to poorer health, more frequent hospitalization, and a higher risk of death. It also costs $290 billion annually in increased medical costs. 

While that report raised alarms, we haven’t made much progress in solving the challenge. According to the AMA, studies conducted in 2018 showed that “most patients only take their medicine as prescribed about half the time and are often reluctant to tell their doctor, while a quarter of new prescriptions are never filled.”

There are plenty of digital apps on the market that reminds people to take their medications (even Apple has released one), which are useful for patients who are willing to adhere to their doctor’s orders but have trouble remembering to do so. They’re a small minority, however. When the AMA surveyed patients as to their hesitancy, forgetfulness didn’t even make this list. Fear, cost, misunderstandings, and worry, however, did. 

If we can create a home-based health-tech solution that addresses these concerns, perhaps we can finally make a dent in non-adherence.

Opportunities to Explore to Fix the Non-Adherence Challenge
The biggest opportunity to fix the non-adherence problem lies in medication literacy. Studies show patients have been prescribed therapies in a doctor’s office, but later have questions about them. Worry sets in if they’ve seen a family member or friend struggle with the side effects of those medications. Patients are left to weigh the pros and cons of taking a prescription on their own. Without immediate (and streamlined) access to answers, adherence isn’t likely. 

Additionally, there is a huge opportunity to expand the present-day reminder concept to every person who plays a role in the patient’s medical journey. As it stands today, a doctor’s office will send a prescription to a pharmacy on behalf of the patient but that doctor’s line of sight into the journey ends there. The pharmacy receives the prescription, but simply waits for the patient to arrive to pick it up. In the meantime, the patient’s caregivers and family members are left in the dark, unaware of what has been prescribed and why. A health-tech app that keeps everyone in the loop provides an opportunity to resolve the patient’s concerns and reasons for non-adherence.

Streamlining the Complexity of Medication Regimes
In some cases, knowing which medications to take and when throughout the day can be very complex. Some need to be taken on an empty stomach, while others can only be taken 30 minutes or an hour after someone has eaten.

Imagine a health-tech app in which the user (or family member) enters the medications prescribed, and the app calculates the ideal time to take each and avoid side effects, such as an upset stomach.

Personalized reminders from an informed home health aid have a higher success of adherence over automated app notification (a responsibility that adult daycare centers take on in the absence of family members to do that for the patient).

Access to Medical Literacy
We can combat prescription hesitancy through easy access to information. Imagine a healthcare app that addresses the patient’s fears and misunderstandings by answering key questions such as: is this fast-acting? Do I need to change my diet? Does it interact with alcohol or grapefruit juice?

Patients make adherence decisions in the period between visiting a doctor and going to a pharmacy. If we can provide them with the information to allay their fears and worries digitally, we greatly increase the probability of adherence. This is especially true in cases when patients are reluctant to share their fears with their doctors or pharmacists.

Strategic chain of escalations
What I like about the Apple app is that it allows the user to opt to share his or her medical data with family members, which is good, but imagine a monitoring tool that reminds a patient to take medication as well as acknowledge that the dose was taken by clicking or swiping on the app. If that acknowledgement never occurs, an alert can be sent to a spouse or adult child who can call the patient to remind him or her personally, as well as address any challenge that caused the prevention. For instance, if the patient is out of medication or a food item that must be taken with it, the family member can run to the pharmacy or store on their behalf.

Integration of medical records
This doesn’t exist yet, but if a home health monitoring device, along with data and AI/ML, had access to a patient’s medical records, it could help patients with dosage titration with a new prescription. It could also do all the data entry on behalf of the patient automatically (thereby increasing the likelihood that the app will be useful to a patient).

It will also be vital to patients who are asked to list all of the prescriptions they take as they fill in the new-patient registration forms when they visit a doctor for the first time. And, it will also flag potential issues automatically, such as when one doctor prescribes a medication that has a negative interaction with one the patient is already taking but forgot to include in the registration form.

Getting the User Experience Right

Clearly, developing a health-tech tool that meets the use cases described above will take some investment, especially in terms of user experience. People with chronic medical conditions are often older and aren’t typically digitally savvy. It will be a challenge (but not an impossibility) for an 80-year-old who lives alone to integrate his or her medical records and establish a chain of escalation, as well as use it on a daily basis. What’s more, for true adherence to occur, the app itself should factor in the unique in-home experiences and lifestyle choices of the user.

But we do have some trends in our favor. First, remote tools for patient monitoring are proliferating, tracking everything from blood pressure and glucose levels, which means that the psychological barrier has been broken. And Pew Research reports that 61% of people over the age of 65 now own a smartphone and that the number is steadily increasing, so it’s likely that a sizable portion of the people who will benefit from an app have the equipment they need to use it. Other devices, like a standalone tablet, can be deployed for people who don’t own a smartphone, and if a healthcare tech app proves to be truly effective, insurance companies may even pay for them.

I have no doubt that innovation can address the $290 billion non-adherence challenge, as long as we focus on its root causes.

About Trenhold Ninestin
Trenholm Ninestein, Director, Product Management at Rightpoint, is a veteran product leader with a passion for mobile design and behavior change. Equipped with a background in film, television and radio, his art of storytelling has adapted to delivering innovative technologies. He has spent the last 15 years focused on delivering mobile-first solutions in education, staffing, and healthcare.

Expanding old horizons through M&A

As health systems around the world seek to relocate more healthcare provision from acute to ambulatory settings, traditional health technology vendors risk being left behind in the old paradigms of care. In response, many have sought to reposition themselves via strategic Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A).

Philips has gone further than most in this regard. Its acquisitions of BioTelemetry and Cardiologs, in 2020 and 2021 respectively, have given it the broadest footprint across the Ambulatory Diagnostic Cardiology landscape, complementing its existing strength in the hospital-oriented Resting and Stress ECG, and ECG management services markets. BioTelemetry also gives Philips exposure to the complementary Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) market, while Cardiologs AI platform presents an opportunity for future integrations with ICMs (the one market Philips is not in), and the rapidly expanding consumer wearables space.

Other high-profile cases of portfolio expansion via M&A include Boston Scientific’s $925 million acquisition of Long-Term ECG and MCT vendor, Preventive Solutions, and Baxter’s $10.5 billion deal for Hill-rom, both in 2021. The Preventive transaction was part of a rapid ascent for Boston Scientific in the Ambulatory Diagnostic Cardiology market, having quickly grown its share of the ICM market since it received regulatory clearance for its first ICM device in 2020. Baxter also entered new territory with its acquisition of Hill-Rom. Previously being a large player in the short-term ECG market, Hill-rom expanded its own solutions portfolio into Long-Term ECG by acquiring BardyDx in early 2021.

Blurring the boundaries – partnerships and emerging technologies in cardiac care

A flurry of recently announced partnerships, some in combination with funding, also hold the potential to dramatically alter Ambulatory Diagnostic Cardiology. Perhaps reflecting an earlier stage of market development, and recent tightening in financial markets, partnerships appear more common than M&A in the emerging fields of hand-held and consumer wearable-based ECG devices.

Handheld ECG vendor AliveCor has been particularly active in this regard. Its partnerships with GE Healthcare, the leading player in the traditional diagnostic cardiology markets of Resting and Stress ECG, enables the integration of patient data from AliveCor’s handheld KardiaMobile 6L ECG data directly into GE Healthcare’s MUSE Cardiac Management Systems. In a similar vein, its partnerships with Biotronik facilitate the integration of KardiaMobile and Biotronik’s ICM devices. This could prove to be a canny move for both parties, given that Biotronik currently competes in the oligopolistic ICM market in which its three competitors, Abbott, Boston Scientific, and Medtronic, have a combined market capitalization of $368 billion.

AliveCor has also established agreements with medical device company (and recent RPM market entrant) Omron, Norwegian RPM vendor Dignio and consumer wearable company Zepp, (though an early integration with the Apple Watch has descended into acrimonious and costly litigation).

Another partnership looking to exploit the potential of ECG sensors in wearable devices is that between iRhythm, the second largest player in the market (when excluding ICM revenues) and Alphabet subsidiary Verily. In July 2022, iRhythm and Verily obtained FDA approval for their jointly developed Zio Watch and Zeus System, for identifying and monitoring Afib, incorporating iRhythm’s continuous PPG, AI-based algorithm. How this partnership will be affected by the recent announcement of layoffs at Verily remains to be seen.

Other companies to enter the fray include multinational tech firms Huawei and Samsung, specialist GPS technology company Garmin, and French-connected health company Withings. Interestingly, one of the conditions of Withings’ FDA approval for its ECG-capable ScanWatch stipulated that the ECG feature can only be unlocked by a prescription from a healthcare provider.

Future Outlook

Despite this flurry of activity, the Ambulatory Diagnostic Cardiology market refuses to sit still. Upcoming developments that could disrupt the market over the short-to-medium term include a hand-held, 12-lead capability ECG device from Heartbeam, and a multi-modality cardiac monitor (Holter, Event and MCT) with built-in 4G connectivity from Rhythmedix, both US-based vendors. A domestic vendor in India, Dozee, recently released an ECG patch, while South Korea is also host to a number of Long-term ECG patch vendors in the process of international expansion. A new cohort of vendors in Europe and the US are also looking to exploit the potential of AI for quicker and more accurate diagnosis.

Ongoing advances in adjacent technologies and markets, such as Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM), and consumer devices, will also continue to influence the Ambulatory Diagnostic Cardiology market. The Long-Term ECG market in particular, where technological advances have lowered barriers to entry, will likely see a proliferation in vendors over the short-to-medium term. However, as is the case in all healthcare technology and software markets, providers continue to favor dealing with a small number of large vendors who can offer enterprise-level solutions (including ongoing technical and administrative support). Without this protective umbrella, vendors supplying specialist, single-point solutions may struggle to achieve critical mass. This suggests that more M&A and partnerships involving large traditional vendors are to come.

Of the current crop, Philips, despite recent travails in its wider business, has the most comprehensive ambulatory diagnostic cardiology solutions offering, though newly independent GE Healthcare has already signaled its intentions to expand into ambulatory and remote care. Baxter, post its Hill-rom acquisition, has also established a presence, though it is yet to achieve substantial market share.

Of the major ICM vendors, only Boston Scientific and Biotronik have made significant recent moves, while the contribution of Abbott’s ICM business to overall revenue is minimal. Medtronic, the proverbial 800-pound gorilla in the ICM room, is in the midst of a major restructuring, including the spin-off of its patient monitoring and respiratory interventions businesses, but has surely been watching recent developments with more than a passing interest.

All of this points to more partnerships, more M&A, and more disruption to come, meaning the Ambulatory Diagnostic Cardiology market will remain one to watch in 2023 and beyond.

About Kelly Patrick

Kelly joined Signify Research in 2020 as a Principal Analyst. She brings with her 12 years of experience covering a range of healthcare technology research at IHS Markit/Omdia. Kelly’s core focus has been on the clinical care space, including patient monitoring, respiratory care and infusion.

Through years of disruption and advancement, the retail industry has evolved tremendously to meet the increased demands of a broadening consumer base. However not every industry – and most notably healthcare — has progressed with the times and buyers’ needs.

The healthcare supply chain specifically must expand beyond its antiquated roots to better serve buyers. Just as in retail, where the U.S. has seen exponential growth over the last 20 years, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the healthcare supply chain must, too, adopt a new model. A model with technology integration has been tested in retail to show improved efficiencies and experience for buyers.

Below are a few key lessons from the retail industry that healthcare supply chain leaders need to adopt in order to move their model forward: 

1. A Better Customer Experience

The retail space has grown exponentially through the number of brands and products on the shelf compared to 20 years ago and through the advent of Amazon. The buying process has become consumer-driven, rather than through in-person ordering with a salesman. Consumers are more inclined to choose a simplified shopping encounter like that of the Apple App Store, which has created an instantaneous, click-of-a-button shopping experience. This innovation has provided significantly more convenience and set new customer expectations. 

Healthcare companies can follow suit to reduce friction in a similar way, meeting the demand of an emerging spectrum of customers – from hospitals to individual patients – for an increasingly automated purchasing environment.

2. Automation and Cost Savings

The retail industry has redefined the shopping experience through artificial intelligence and warehouse automation, making it a prime example for what other industries can implement to drive better customer interactions. 

The healthcare supply chain, on the other hand, has been widely left out of digital transformation. By taking a more modern and flexible approach, it can improve the buying process through incorporating technology pioneered outside of healthcare.

With technology and economies of scale, prices for goods can be driven down. Those cost savings can be passed along to the customer and invested into the company to further implement technology. 

3. Price Transparency and Data Tracing

Tools that allow price transparency and data tracing create peace of mind for both the customer and organization. Large online retail marketplaces provide an easy example of structured ordering and tracking. This model creates trust and provides on-demand purchase details, along with shipment tracking information. The healthcare industry has an opportunity to take those lessons and apply them – particularly when it comes to the purchasing of medical supplies Examples like UberEats, with its well-established processes, allow for swift delivery and accessible tracking and customer services.

Buyers from the healthcare market don’t have access to the same receipt details or order history, as the process still widely involves third-party catalog shopping. This results in extra red tape, requiring buyers to contact customer support for issues that could be automated.

Incorporating consistency and transparency into the healthcare supply system will improve the purchase experience while reducing customer service costs. 

4. Commercialization and Digitization 

The retail industry created an incredibly successful model for online purchasing and engagement. The healthcare supply chain lacks that kind of proven system. 

For an example, look at vaccine patents. When vaccines (or any drug for that matter) are accessible to the public market, it allows for many companies to bring the not-so-secret formula to life, empowering commercialization. With more competition, and a better backbone of a system, the price for the vaccine or drug plummets.

Envision a future where all healthcare supplies are accessible in online marketplaces — no more needless time wasted flipping through catalogs. Through commercialization and the digitization of systems, buyers can find everything they need online.

The retail industry has undergone seismic shifts to meet changing demand. The days of department store browsing have long been in decline, as evidenced by a decrease in revenue from brick-and-mortar stores. To meet this challenge, the integration of technology has vastly improved the consumer experience. As the Amazon model illustrates, consumers’ demands and urge to shop remains, but there is a need to shift that experience.

To advance, it’s essential that the healthcare marketplace remains adaptable to meet the demands of the consumer experience and be a part of the online marketplace revolution. Leveraging the lessons from the retail industry, healthcare marketplaces can improve the buyer experience. This will enhance care and reduce spending costs across health verticals. 

About JT Garwood

JT Garwood is the CEO and Co-founder of bttn, a Seattle-based technology company transforming medical supply chain distribution through e-commerce and digital solutions. Garwood is a two-time marketplace founder, angel investor and active advisor to U.S. startups.

The Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) standard was introduced by HL7 in 2014 as a significant replacement for the HL7 V2 and V3 standards. An open standard called FHIR, which was initially drafted in 2011 makes it easier than ever for legacy systems and new apps to exchange data. FHIR was created to not only increase communication efficiency and interoperability compared to earlier standards but also to facilitate implementation by giving clear specifications and allowing developers to take advantage of popular Web tools. 

FHIR vs HL7 

The fundamental distinction between HL7 and FHIR is that HL7 only supports XML, whereas FHIR makes use of RESTful web services and open web technologies like XML, JSON, and RDF. Building on earlier standards like HL7 CDA, V2, and V3, FHIR is more user-friendly because it supports a wider range of technologies. 

Additionally, FHIR offers a variety of alternatives for data exchange between systems. It supports the RESTful API strategy, which substitutes one-to-many interfaces with point-to-point interfaces. Data exchange proceeds more efficiently as a result, and it takes less time to new data exchange partners. The earlier HL7 standards are less flexible and more out-of-date in this regard. 

How FHIR is replacing HL7  

The healthcare FHIR standard is capable of everything HL7 V2 is and more. It features a less challenging learning curve and does away with HL7’s restrictions. 

Advantages of FHIR over HL7 

– Unlike HL7V2, FHIR is not constrained to a specific encoding syntax. 

– Additionally, it speeds up implementation, provides strong security features, and supports one-to-many data sharing. 

– The meaningful pieces that is shared or exchanged as “resources” (which are somewhat comparable to “segments” in HL7 V2 messages). A resource may contain text, metadata, or bundled groups of data that together make up clinical documentation. Similar to a URL for a web page, every resource has its own identification tag. Devices and apps can easily obtain necessary data through that tag without going through laborious data exchange procedures. Resources can be changed and deleted using the RESTful API strategy. 

– Mobile apps are especially suited to FHIR. FHIR enables APIs to obtain the necessary data from many systems and give it in forms that programmers can quickly include into their mobile applications. And because only the requested data is communicated via FHIR, that data can be shared quickly, which is essential for mobile apps. 

– The use of FHIR for mobile healthcare apps has clearly gained traction. The SMART on FHIR API was developed in 2014 by the SMART (Substitutable Medical Apps, Reusable Technologies) Health IT project to give developers the ability to create apps once and use them throughout the healthcare system. Additionally, Apple developed an FHIR-based health records feature for its iOS operating system in 2018, providing customers with convenient access to a variety of healthcare data. 

– Version FHIR-R4: FHIR R4 was made available in January 2019. The initial normative content for the interoperability standard is contained in HL7 FHIR R4, providing a solid foundation for the healthcare IT sector. 

– FHIR R4 served as a normative standard to indicate that particular resource types within the FHIR architecture had attained stability. In order to achieve normative status, one must adhere to HL7’s version management strategy and attempt to maintain forward compatibility with future releases (the standards organization overseeing FHIR). 

– FHIR Works on AWS is a new AWS Solutions Implementation with an open-source software toolkit that can be used to develop an interface for existing healthcare apps and data using Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR). FHIR APIs that support the standard are provided via a serverless implementation. 

Why Adopt FHIR? 

Information sharing may be made easier, implementation is made simpler, and mobile apps are supported better thanks to FHIR. Additionally, it provides crucial use cases that are advantageous to patients, payers, and providers. 

To hasten decision-making, clinicians can exchange patient data more effectively among teams. Clinical data can be added to claims data by insurance companies to enhance risk assessment, reduce costs, and enhance outcomes. Additionally, patients can have more influence over their health by getting access to medical data via user-friendly apps that operate on smartphones, tablets, and wearables. 

These are all excellent arguments in favor of implementing FHIR. However, many businesses have no other option. The U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) finalized a requirement for the use of FHIR by a range of payers and providers subject to CMS regulation starting in mid-2021 in 2020. 

This year’s ONC Cures Act Final Rule mandates that qualified health IT developers update and offer their clients certified API technology— FHIR-based application programming interfaces—by December 31, 2022.

FHIR Implementation Challenges 

FHIR-compliant systems take time and resources Systems that are FHIR-compatible need effort and time. The process of implementing FHIR is not very simple. From foundational to structural interoperability, the approach involves multiple steps. You must fulfill interconnectivity requirements in each app utilized in order for FHIR-compliant systems to be fundamentally interoperable. Applications must safely communicate and exchange data. The structural aspects of organizational interoperability must be altered. Communication between companies, entities, and individuals, as well as every end-user process, must be integrated. 

Simply said, a thorough study of the present system is necessary for FHIR implementation. Your current systems require investment in high-quality research if you want to enhance them. Resources are strained, but it contributes to the development of FHIR healthcare services with the maximum level of interoperability. 

FHIR integration are tailored to specific business needs 

Business objectives are pursued by FHIR-compliant systems in addition to technical optimization. Therefore, effective business analysts are needed for FHIR implementations. Particularly for TPAs in the healthcare industry. Traditional healthcare providers have similar needs, but third parties have their own business models and applications for healthcare data. For instance, they could need to combine insurance information with patient medical records in a single system. Therefore, before developing data infrastructure, a technology partner that provides a data exchange system for such an organization must investigate its business logic and data formats. It results in more difficulties with HL7 FHIR integration services. 

Issues with FHIR security are inevitable. 

FHIR will force a business to reevaluate some security procedures, even if it complies with HIPAA regulations and safeguards patient data. The issue is that sharing access to some system data is a need when implementing FHIR healthcare services. It makes people more vulnerable and presents new security difficulties. Interoperability presents concerns about how to map data while upholding the same level of confidentiality for transferred data as with other PHI. There is a demand for multi-tenant models with extensive use functions, roles, and permissions. Better data control is provided, but the configuration is more challenging. 

 Lack of technical expertise 

Healthcare vendors and TPAs require either qualified internal specialists or outside assistance to embrace FHIR services. Since HL7 FHIR services are a relatively new standard, there aren’t many people that are familiar with setting up FHIR cloud platforms. Therefore, there will be a lack of engineers who are knowledgeable of the FHIR API. The number of healthcare organizations working to comply with FHIR regulations is growing, and there is a huge need for experts in FHIR APIs. 

This is why it could be difficult to find someone to implement FHIR services. The majority of healthcare organizations think about using an outside vendor to get around it. A software development company with relevant knowledge may quickly and affordably produce customized open-source solutions that adhere to FHIR specifications. 

 Data uniformity in third-party applications 

Setting up the functionality of the FHIR APIs requires data manageability and consistency. The records must match and be in the same format across any connected third-party software. You won’t be able to use cloud FHIR systems interchangeably until then. Building a system with reliable data or transferring Epic to the cloud are considerably more difficult than they appear. In addition to other tasks, you’ll need to identify potential data problems, create processing rules, specify compliance metrics, and use data remediation processes. Additionally, you should read How to Integrate an EHR System Like Epic, Cerner or MEDHost, Carecloud, Pelitas. 

 A never-ending saga is the FHIR integration process. 

The complexity of healthcare systems will only increase in the future. Furthermore, not all systems are compatible with the FHIR standard. To ensure FHIR security and be HIPAA-compliant, data-sharing procedures should be evaluated in connected third-party apps. 

So, the best course of action could be to work with a seasoned FHIR provider. They’ll aid in the adoption of new features while maintaining compliance by offering continuing support. 

Preparing for FHIR adoption 

Significant system changes may be necessary to support FHIR. The standard also imposes several stringent guidelines that are difficult to implement without an appropriate plan. 

In order to deploy FHIR services and adhere to the best practices in the industry, it is crucial to create a clear roadmap. The analysis is required to determine how FHIR resources will address specific technological or administrative issues and create the necessary documentation. 

About Kishore Pendyala

Kishore Pendyala has more than 20 years of experience in the Healthcare IT domain. He prides himself on understanding the complexities of enterprise business as well as the intricacies of running a small company. He has worn many hats (often at the same time) throughout his career including data analyst, product owner, business analyst, software engineer, team leader, QA engineer, and probably several others. Out of all of this, he’s discovered his passion is really in identifying simple and effective solutions to Healthcare Interoperability issues. This has driven his leadership at KPi-Tech Services as CEO and co-founder and has proven to be sustainable, and productive for the company. 

Jon Bloom, MD, CEO and Co-founder of Podimetrics

From a digital health perspective, 2022 was a reset year for many and a serious reality check. We went from sky high growth to the sky is falling, and in 2023 I think this market correction movement will continue forward. To me, the biggest surprise of 2022 was that despite the market tanking, digital health companies continued to truck forward with huge deals. This includes massive acquisitions like Amazon and OneMedical, as well as deals like CVS Health and Signify.

Oliver Kharraz, CEO & Founder, Zocdoc

Big tech will make noise, not real change, with their forays into fixing healthcare. Big tech companies have not worked to improve healthcare from the inside out. Instead, they’ve endeavored to make money via their respective core businesses: Apple aims to drive hardware adoption (Apple Watch), Google tried to tackle big data applied to clinical questions (Verily), and Amazon has worked to leverage its supply chain strengths (Pillpack). This does not solve the problem at the root of the poor American healthcare experience: a uniquely disconnected ecosystem that fails patients and providers. Changing this system involves building the connective tissue to make disparate systems work together, and that’s a long, hard, and slow road. It’s also not a road big tech companies are set up to travel. Focused on growing their market caps, they continually aim to leverage their core competencies to expand their business into new areas. The $4T healthcare industry is a prime and seemingly lucrative target for this expansion, whether their core competencies are relevant to healthcare or not.  As a result, big tech will not make traction against improving the systemic issues that plague the healthcare system in 2023.

Nate Fox, co-founder and CTO, Ribbon Health

Racial Bias in AI Algorithms: Since AI is frequently used in healthcare, it needs to be used with a code of ethics to prevent bias. Patients prefer familiarity and personalized care, and research shows this can lead them to choose a provider of the same race or ethnic background. Machine learning models can help extract provider data to give patients the full scope of available providers out there and their specialties, location, and more, but what we shouldn’t do is program an algorithm to predict or assume race. A human component is needed in these AI programs to make sure the system is not guessing a provider’s race based on their name due to inherent bias. If you want to use AI without bias, you need to have a human oversee its operations.

Omri Shor is the founder and CEO of Medisafe

Incorporating digital health early: I believe that incorporating digital health tools earlier in the prescription process and combining digital with traditional medication therapy will increase in 2023. As more digital medication management solutions gain FDA approval, there is an increased opportunity to integrate digital support as part of the medication process and reduce medication abandon rates.

Anish Sebastion, CEO and Co-founder of Babyscripts

Walmart, CVS, Optum, Amazon, and others have made headlines this year with a series of acquisitions and partnerships that promise to disrupt traditional healthcare models. These players are honing in on at-home medical services and primary care, extending their reach deeper into the care continuum and blurring the lines between who owns what part of the space.

These players have a wealth of consumer data at their disposal, and those in the retail space have existing locations in some of the most vulnerable areas of the country in terms of access to care (in 2017, 90 percent of Americans lived within 10 miles of a Walmart compared to 82 percent who lived the same distance from a hospital). Existing infrastructure also positions Big Retail to partner on social determinants of health risks, such as food insecurity, giving them an edge on traditional providers.

These new offerings threaten to siphon younger, healthier patients from health systems, putting increased pressure on hospitals to integrate at-home care models and own the digital front door. While health systems will continue to capture the majority of condition-specific and specialty care; ownership of primary care, insurance services, and ancillary care (lab/imaging/pharmacy) are at the center of a contentious battle.

Ankit Gupta, CEO/Founder of Bicycle Health

Flight for quality investors: Digital health startups banked a record-breaking $29.1B in 2021. With the market downturns we’ve seen in 2022, that trend will shift. Digital health companies that can’t demonstrate momentum in terms of growth, engagement or evidence-based clinical outcomes will struggle to find funding in 2023. Investors are going to be looking for good outcomes, good economics, and a path to profitability.

Veda co-founders, Meghan Gaffney and Dr. Bob Lindner

Blockchain will continue to be “buzzword” across the industry: Over the past few years, we’ve seen blockchain begin to touch almost every industry – healthcare’s no exception. Looking ahead, we’ll continue to see blockchain trending as it’s implemented across the healthcare ecosystem. While we’ve all likely heard of blockchain technology’s potential to transform healthcare by putting the patient at the center the experience, we should evaluate if it’s actually worth the hype and if it’s able to solve the problems its being advertised for.

Justin Norden, MD, Partner at GSR Ventures

In 2023, we will see accelerated adoption of digital heath companies who are using AI to ease provider burnout and shortages. As health systems are running tighter budgets in 2023, the startups that are demonstrating the return on investment (ROI) of automation will see systems move faster to partner.

Yossi Bahagon, Chairman of Sweetch

Innovating and Integrating Wearables: We should anticipate more inter-device integration and a greater variety of devices including continuous glucose monitors (CGM), insulin pumps, and hybrid closed loop systems being introduced to the markets. This will lead to advances in comfort, convenience, durability, and user-experience.

Robin Shah, Thyme Care CEO and Co-Founder

We anticipate a continued shift in the digital health ecosystem towards personalized, disease-specific care that prioritizes support throughout all facets of treatment. The trend is clear: chronic care patients and their families want a care team that supports them through every step of the process, including sourcing and explaining viable options, as well as a consistent care team well-versed on a patient’s given case. The digital health industry is rising to the occasion, with value-based cancer care  at the forefront, as we will see at HLTH 2022. As this trend continues, companies will face the challenge of creating comprehensive support through all facets of the patients’ journey to health and doing so in a cost-effective manner.

Greg Mayes, President and CEO at Reunion Neuroscience

2023 could bring the first regulatory approval for a medicine for mental health using a psychedelic backbone.  This is incredibly exciting and great news for the hundreds of millions of people that are negatively impacted by the ongoing mental health crisis in our society.  Moreover, the achievement of this milestone will validate the need for further investment in psychedelics in additional indications where the unmet medical need remains huge.

Maneesh Jain, CEO and co-founder of Mirvie

Desire for personalized, proactive and preventive care in pregnancy will rise: In 2023, expecting parents will demand the same personalized care that they receive in other areas of their healthcare in their pregnancy journeys. As such, pregnancy health must start transforming from one-size-fits-none to right-sized care for every mom to begin addressing untenable trends of rising blood-pressure disorders like preeclampsia and increases in preventable pregnancy-related deaths in the United States. Breakthroughs like predictive technology driven by biological insights to foresee complications further down the road in a pregnancy will continue to advance, enabling a new future of personalized and preventive pregnancy care.

Dr. Adrienne Boissy Chief Medical Officer at Qualtrics and Staff Neurologist at the Cleveland Clinic

Transformative organizations will bake empathy into leadership and operations: 47% of healthcare workers plan to leave the industry within the next two years. Not to overstate the obvious, but this is a heartbreaking number we have never seen before. For years, studies have shown us exhaustion, lack of value alignment in the workplace, and rising mental health concerns are plaguing our caregivers. And, patients and families are seemingly more frustrated themselves – often directed at people doing their best. Surprisingly then, for the first time in years, we are hearing patient experience and communication training programs are defunded, experience leaders – and many others – are leaving their roles, and experience efforts are still fighting to be relevant and resourced. In the year ahead, experience programs – and empathy at scale – are alarmingly at risk as budgets shrink and many experience leaders are pushing the rock uphill with small teams, lack of current and future investment, and their tanks on empty.

If we continue to think about patient experience programs as doing what is required from a regulatory standpoint, we miss the enormous opportunity to understand how empathy and the human experience have a role in every single part of the organization. As with any transformation, it will require courage and creativity. Obvious additional spaces for experience work are in caring for our own people and connecting patient and employee experience more holistically, but also less obvious, more operational places like contact centers to drive access and growth, safety processes like RCAs, and revenue cycle to drive efficiency and dollars.

Rather than limiting patient experience efforts, now is the time for the industry to step up and fully support its people by ingraining empathy into broader healthcare operations, caregiver culture, and actual transformation. Whether digital or human, a commitment to empathy and compassion will connect the dots across an organization, by listening to pain points and joy in the moment in all channels, deeply understanding the emotions and values of patients and employees and then honoring them by acting on what we hear with processes that work, feel intuitive, and even delight. Experience leaders can’t do it alone – 2023 can and should be the year healthcare invests in empathy at scale.

Sandeep Shah, CEO and Founder of Skyscape

Healthcare services will be beholden to “consumerization,” or consumer demands for a more connected, transparent patient experience. Millennials and Gen Zers today have lived digitally-connected lives, and most consumer services have already catered to digital demands – whether that’s ordering grocery delivery, shopping online without visiting the store, or purchasing a car to be delivered. The healthcare industry is next, as providers must build relationships with their consumers.

I expect a more patient-friendly experience, incorporating trends such as online scheduling and onboarding to create more efficient in-person visits, automated post-visit follow ups, and better incorporating remote care into the experience, and even direct patient communication with providers to build trust.

Chris Bumgardner, Chief Technology Officer at 100Plus

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the adoption of digital health and virtual care, and now moving forward into 2023, we will continue to see consumerism in healthcare at the forefront of the health tech evolution. Patients now have more options for how and where they access care, and they will continue to seek a more personalized healthcare experience. Healthcare organizations will be pushed to leverage technology that can be incorporated into their patients’ daily lives. And as a result, there will be continued growth in the adoption of connected health technologies such as AI-virtual health assistants, remote patient monitoring and wearables that allow this type of personalization of the health experience while also delivering a more proactive approach to care management.  

Julie Stegman, Vice President, Nursing Segment of Health Learning, Research & Practice  at Wolters Kluwer

Nursing education goes to the metaverse: Over the last decade, technology has fundamentally transformed nursing education. Post-pandemic, experiential learning remains an integral part of educating new nurses, whether delivered online, in the classroom, in the simulation lab, or taking a hybrid approach.  No matter the setting, leveraging virtual simulation, and adaptive learning are critical to engage students and help them build clinical judgment and ensure they are prepared for practice. In 2023, nursing education continues to be a leader in innovation, leaping forward by embracing the metaverse and leveraging virtual reality.  Virtual reality creates new, immersive learning opportunities so students can enhance their clinical education by practicing skills, working in teams and gaining exposure to the fuller and more complex caseloads that nurses manage in real life, better preparing new nurses for the demands of real-world clinical practice even when they don’t have physical access to clinical practice settings.

Kuldeep Jiwani, SVP of Data Science at HiLabs

Going into 2023, we can expect to see AI used more frequently to discover the hidden potential of dirty data in healthcare. Health plans will deprioritize manual data entry and switch to ML-based techniques, which are cost effective, faster to implement and easier to manage. Where the algorithm learns context from the data itself, one just needs to feed it with large historical data to auto-discover the context. Specifically, AI will be used to solve for use cases like detecting:

– Data quality issues in clinical data: This can help in maintaining better monitoring of care provided to patients

– Misattributions in value-based care programs: This can ensure patients get attributed to the right providers

– Overpayments in claims processing: This can ensure both providers and payers are fairly compensated

– Inaccuracies in provider directory data: This can prevent surprise billing for patients

Vikram Savkar, Senior Vice President & General Manager, Medicine Segment of Health Learning, Research & Practice at Wolters Kluwer

Open medicine to come of age: Growing interest in open access as well as preprints in the medical arena, in part due to support from both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), has pushed the publishing side of the Open Medicine movement into the forefront in recent years.  But other global concerns – including reduction in global and local health disparities, the push towards personalized medicine, renewed focus on global health in the post-pandemic era, and the effort to more broadly distribute funding for medical research – will ensure that the conversation around Open Medicine will broaden in 2023 to become a more all-encompassing and compelling vision for global well-being.  The need for openness, dialogue, accelerated innovation, and global collaboration demonstrated by the pandemic will make Open Medicine a key topic in any conversation around society being better prepared for future threats.

Stacey Rivkin, Vice President, Client Solutions, H1

Healthcare influencers won’t leave the (Twitter) nest, but will spread their wings. Despite the threats that influencers (including healthcare opinion leaders) will leave the flock amid Twitter’s ongoing turmoil, the reality is that they will continue to use the platform to share and amplify their messages. Still, we’ll see practitioners spread their wings as they become more digitally savvy and comfortable creating digital content (think: dermatologists sharing stories on Instagram, or pediatricians creating YouTube shorts).

Evangelos Hytopoulos, Sr. Director of data science at iRhythm

There is no doubt that AI has become mainstream in many areas. In medicine, AI approaches are currently both developed and deployed at a rapid rate, fueled by the dearth of data that already exist from different modalities (genetic, genomic, images, EHR, etc.), as well as the continuous streams of data that are provided by wearables.

The majority of models today are based on supervised learning, where labels are combined with measurements to teach an algorithm to predict unseen data. However, it takes a lot of effort to create a labeled data set and as a result, usually only a subset of the data can be labeled – thus limiting the learning capacity of the current models.

In upcoming years, we can expect to see AI approaches that are based on the use of self-supervised and generative AI algorithms in order to facilitate the incorporation of a larger volume of data in model training.

Supervised learning is capable of learning important features of the underlying measurements that are a richer representation of the data. The advantage of generative algorithms is the creation of synthetic data – labels coming from a different signal domain and the important features are learned from the domain of interest. In both cases, proper validation will be required to prove the validity of the algorithms and the lack of any bias in its predictions.

Mifan Careem, Vice President – Solutions Architecture and Head of Healthcare Practice at WSO2

Fostering Healthcare Innovation in Wearable Devices: From fitness bands to smart watches, consumers are increasingly turning to wearable devices to track key health measures. At the same time, employers and health insurance organizations see these devices as one way to improve health among staff and members and reduce program costs. This presents a tremendous opportunity for innovation in the healthcare industry, but too often the scope of information is limited by the inability to share data with them. This is because the healthcare data is locked up in a variety of healthcare systems using different formats and standards. In 2023, we need to see the industry move toward using APIs, ideally in the Fast Healthcare Interoperability (FHIR) format, as an intermediate layer for exchanging electronic health records. In this way, data can be readily and securely provided to stakeholders, such as third-party organizations, internal or external developers, and other apps or systems, in order to deliver new, meaningful, and more personalized digital healthcare apps to consumers with wearable devices.

Dr. Roger Seheult, MD, Medical Advisor to On/Go

I predict that bringing rapid patient care directly to people at their homes – what some are calling “direct-to-patient healthcare” – will see increased adoption in 2023 as the health industry prioritizes new, affordable, easily accessible solutions. In the olden days, before hospitals and doctors’ offices were commonplace, most people were treated by doctors who made house calls. Everything old is new again, and 21st-century house calls across the entire treatment journey from diagnostics to telemedicine to treatment will become more commonplace.

Nate Maslak, the co-founder/CEO of Ribbon Health

Data Personalization: 38% of consumers want more personalized and inclusive healthcare options. In 2023, we’ll see a greater shift towards healthcare enterprises prioritizing this personalization, by innovating their current data infrastructure to show a range of information that lets a patient make an educated care decision based on what matters most to them.

Julian Harris, MD – CEO of ConcertoCare

There are 76 million baby boomers who will be 65 by 2030, and they want a better, easier way to receive health care where they prefer it most — in their homes. In 2023, I expect we will continue to see accelerated demand for and investment in tech-enabled delivery of at-home care for seniors, especially given the growing prevalence of chronic conditions in this age group and the impact that has on healthcare spending and outcomes in the country. As we head into 2023, there’s a real opportunity for CMS to strengthen the value-based care models that make this type of innovative care happen.

Amy Brown, CEO of Authenticx

Companies throwing technology at their staffing shortfalls — without first understanding the problem they’re solving for and how it actually impacts the customer experience — will be an utter failure. Spending millions of dollars on the latest digital innovation or optimization transformation won’t solve the patient experience and will ultimately hurt the company’s business. Some healthcare organizations say they’re in the business of improving patient experiences when they’re actually digitally optimizing and simply adding more technology to cover staffing shortages or eliminate overhead. Leaders must use technology to listen at scale to patients and know how and when to enable digital solutions and the staff they do have to do their best work.

Oliver Kharraz, CEO & Founder, Zocdoc

Savvy care organizations will increasingly use physician extenders to offer more appointment inventory, grow revenue, and increase access to care.

As the costs of operating a healthcare practice or hospital rise, and staffing and burnout issues add additional stressors, the medical community is facing unprecedented times. Savvy practice and system leaders will make good use of physician extenders, who can help close financial and labor gaps. Physician extenders can help open up more appointment capacity, and reduce the workload of physicians by managing patient communication, filling prescriptions, and taking on relevant clinical tasks. Additionally, higher physician extender to physician ratios can significantly reduce costs by improving physician efficiency; physicians can focus on the more complex cases. Physician extenders will help close the care gap for patients, while increasing revenue for medical practices.

Florian Otto, CEO at Cedar

Healthcare Consumers Will Vote With Their Feet: We’re seeing consumers find and stay with providers that give them the best end-to-end experience beyond just their clinical visit. These days, the quality of a consumer’s clinical visit is now table stakes, and the experience before and after an appointment make the difference between a repeat customer or a one-time visit. Unfortunately, a lot of providers are still offering poor administrative quality. In the coming year, providers must double down on a holistic experience, both in-person and digital, to put the consumer at the center of the healthcare ecosystem. To do so, providers will need to think beyond their individual relationship with the consumer and instead work with all stakeholders to provide a united source of truth and communication. Those that do will see the greatest amount of return by way of patient foot traffic.

Ariel Katz, CEO & Co-Founder at H1

The US will become the leader in healthcare data democratization. Next year, we’ll see more initiatives aimed at democratizing and digitizing healthcare data so we can use it to foster innovation, bring drugs to market faster, and ultimately improve patient care. While a few countries have set the stage – Brazil’s DATASUS provides an integrated and open healthcare database, and Israel captures all patient data digitally from birth to death – we predict that the US will emerge as the leader in 2023. We’ve seen the value that using de-identified data can have on improving patient outcomes, and with recent federal regulations requiring that patients have digital access to their full health records, US healthcare companies will place a greater emphasis on and investment in data democratization and digitization.

Brett Vokey, Founder and CEO of BreatheSuite

The healthcare industry as we knew it has been forever altered by the global pandemic. Physicians and their patients have increasingly been relying on virtual care and remote patient monitoring (RPM) solutions as the industry evolves to accommodate COVID-19. I expect the forward momentum of virtual care and RPM will continue in the coming year due to their convenience, positive impact on patient outcomes and potential to reduce costs.

For example, 90 percent of people in the U.S. using a Metered-Dose Inhaler (MDI) are using it incorrectly and 66 percent are not adherent to the medication as prescribed (skipping doses, etc.). Inhaler misuse makes up about $5- $7 billion of the approximately $25 billion spent on inhalers annually. While physicians can identify incorrect inhaler technique through visual observation, but it is not possible to critique their patient every time they use a Metered-Dose Inhaler (MDI). Connected respiratory devices leverage technology that tracks, scores and provides cloud-based feedback on inhaler usage to users and, with consent, their care teams can ensure people are getting the most out of their inhaler.

Bronwyn Spira is the CEO and Co-Founder of Force Therapeutics

Since CMS released the new CPT codes for remote therapeutic monitoring (RTM) earlier this year, providers are finally being acknowledged for the time they spend connecting with patients outside the office. In 2023, it will be easier to make high-quality musculoskeletal care more accessible to minority and lower-income populations who are much less likely to have orthopedic surgery – and more likely to experience poor outcomes when they do. RTM, through digital care management tools, can enable individualized care pathways based on the patient’s demographics, social determinants of health, and clinical status. Immediate adjustments to the care plan can be made according to the patient’s reported pain, range of motion, and adherence to remote physical therapy. By enabling high-quality personalized education for patients who may be unable to present for in-person care due to financial, logistical, or motion challenges, a broader set of patient populations can have access to needed care as telehealth is increasingly accepted.

Piotr Orzechowski, Co-Founder and CEO of Infermedica

On the state of healthtech funding: Starting around Q2 we observed a downturn when it comes to venture funding, especially later stage. In fact Q3 ’22 was the lowest quarterly total in digital health funding in the past 11 quarters. Given clear macro-economic challenges and looking at performance of some of the leading public telehealth companies, investors have become more conservative this year but I believe this is a rather temporary trend. Great companies will still get funded, and the amount of capital available in the market is substantial. I believe that starting from Q2 2023 the digital health funding situation will gradually improve and will recover by mid-2024 bringing investor’s sentiment back on track.

Saket Saurabh, Founder and CEO of Nexla

Data Mesh Takes a Backseat But Data Products Will Push on Ahead in 2023: With the economy in a slowdown, we can expect data mesh— frameworks that bring scale to enterprise wide data adoption — to take a backseat. 2023 will be the year of data products before the industry moves towards data mesh in 2024 and beyond.

Yossi Bahagon, Chairman of Sweetch

Closing the Equity Gap: We will see more programs implemented that bridge the equity gaps in chronic care management, obesity, diabetes, and preventive care, among other areas.

Mike Peluso, Chief Technology Officer at Rectangle Health

In 2021, we saw that patients were actively seeking digital tools to the point where they were changing providers to add technology to their healthcare. As the calendar turns to 2022, we expect to see continued growth in popularity of digital healthcare management tools like text communications, digital wallets, text-to-pay, payment plans, and QR codes that point to digital portals.

Practices are seeing the benefits of replacing outdated payment collection processes that involve manual data entry, paper-based billing, and follow-up phone calls. These digital payment options get practices paid faster and increase patient convenience and, in turn, loyalty. The digital transformation is proving not to be a fad necessitated by COVID-19, but a way to find better connections between practices and patients.

Terrence Sims, Chief Strategy Officer, Raintree

The US population is aging rapidly. By 2040 we expect the population of those 65 and older to double. Today non-fatal falls account for $50B in healthcare spending, a number that is unlikely to diminish with an ageing population. However, most falls are preventable, and moving forward fall prevention will be a growing priority. This will drive an increased need for therapists to spend more time working directly with patients, and less time doing paperwork. Our population of care providers is limited, which increases the need for professionals to work as efficiently as possible. In 2023 and beyond, the healthcare industry will be making major technology, operational and manpower investments into solving the non-fatal fall challenge.

Vince King, Chief Commercial Officer at TailorMed

Taking a note from Disney – patient experience at the forefront of healthcare

The pandemic heightened patient demand for digital engagement  – and in 2023, healthcare leaders will lean into the digital acceleration, identifying new avenues to connect with patients and amplify the patient experience. We’ll see more healthcare entities hiring individuals from companies including Disney and Carnival with top-tier customer experiences to optimize the patient journey and experience in a way the healthcare industry has not previously prioritized.  

However, there will be a learning curve as the industry finds a healthy balance of how to engage patients and when. Understanding who the patient is and where they are at each step of their journey will be key to engaging logically and strategically. Patients need the right data at the right time to take the right action – whether that is filling out automated intake forms or engaging in the billing process following care. Aligned incentives across healthcare stakeholders will be critical in this process, working to improve care coordination and delivery. The more successful healthcare is at engaging with patients digitally, the more the industry can ask consumers to engage in more aspects of their care, and the greater momentum we’ll see next year and beyond. 

Chris Luoma, SVP of Global Product Management at GHX

Over the last two years, healthcare has seen increased adoption of solutions like cloud ERPs and electronic invoicing,” said Chris Luoma, Senior Vice President, Global Product Management, GHX. “As the need for digital transformation increases, this trend will continue. We are starting to see provider organizations that were early cloud ERP adopters mature their cloud strategies, allowing them to think about how they can change the way they operate their businesses and drive greater efficiency. Examples of this include deploying ERP into non-acute settings to drive efficiencies that previous, on-premise systems were not able to reach, extending their systems further with robotic process automation, artificial intelligence and machine learning to reduce manual tasks and creating overarching data strategies that bring together financial, clinical and supply chain data to drive insights that help improve patient care. Despite the upfront costs of digital transformation initiatives, we expect to see more forward-thinking healthcare executives make the near-term investment, even amid financial pressures, to support the long-term growth and health of their organizations.

Karen Kobelski, Business Unit Vice President & General Manager, Health, Clinical Surveillance, Compliance & Data Solutions at Wolters Kluwer

Patient safety will improve with regulatory oversight of healthcare technology – particularly around the emerging software in the medical device space. With increasing regulations, hospitals and health systems now face greater hurdles using and maintaining technology built in-house. In 2023, we expect clinical leaders trying to build solutions will experience pushback from internal legal and regulatory teams challenged to manage the burden of compliance. Many hospital leaders will turn to proven, clinically validated, and compliant tools in lieu of building their own solutions. By partnering with companies that have already taken on this burden of compliance, health system leaders will be able to keep internal teams focused on providing the best care to patients.

Dr. George Gellert, Medical Advisor for Value Demonstration at Infermedica

Demonstrating ROI: Despite healthcare IT being central to and a vehicle for not only clinical care delivery, but all operational and financial aspects of health system performance, truly robust evidence-based evaluation of impact, value and ROI remains a “nice to have” rather than an imperative. Most health IT companies are held to a low standard of evidence of value and proof of ROI through marketing white papers and quantification that is not robust or systematically evaluated, rather than being required to demonstrate value through scientific peer review and journal publication. This has not served the interests of health systems and care delivery organizations, clinicians or patients well. Health IT solutions, which profoundly influence and impact care delivery and organizational performance, should have to scientifically demonstrate value – much as drug therapies, medical devices, and other diagnostic and therapeutic technologies do. Only when scientific research on health IT impact and value demonstration is regarded as being as important to healthcare delivery as clinical trials, will spending on health IT become rational and systematic.

Brian Doyle, Rectangle Health’s VP of Enterprise Sales

Following a year of economic uncertainty, increased expenses, and staff burnout, many practices will need to address these challenges and those that lie ahead in the new year. As 2023 approaches, providers seek new solutions to streamline administrative workloads while providing top-notch care. The solution to many of these problems lies in digital transformation: an advanced digital footprint can effectively streamline and automate administrative workloads, improve the patient experience, and mitigate employee burnout — equipping providers and patients with an enhanced healthcare experience.

The benefits of enhancing one’s digital footprint are many. For starters, digital transformation allows patients to sign up for appointments online while allowing practices to manage all appointments on the back end. Customizable texts remind patients of appointments, send links to payments, or announce new check-up openings. Technology can offer several options for patients to pay their medical bills — whether from their mobile device, laptop, or the office with contactless payments like Apple Pay — and offer payment installment programs to help ease the financial burden. Not only does this enhance the overall patient experience, but it also increases the practice’s bottom line. Patients and practices will benefit by simplifying the business side of healthcare through a digital transformation. Starting the new year with an advanced digital footprint gives providers the tools to rise to new challenges and meet evolving patient demands, optimizing the healthcare experience for all.

Marie Lamont, Global RWE Data Strategy, Access & Enablement at IQVIA and General Manager at Inteliquet

Data harmonization on the results of genetic testing and research is required for us to effectively use the millions of data points for more than one trial. By reusing this information across various studies, researchers can have broader insights into uncovering methods to better the lives of patients in a faster manner. The question before us is how to do so and which is the correct data format to standardize on. In 2023, the industry will begin to look at how to solve this challenge to better formulate and build upon the millions of data points already being collected in a cohesive manner.

Arun Nagdev, M.D., Sr. Director of Clinical Education at Exo, and Director of Emergency Ultrasound at Alameda Health System

The siloed nature of healthcare, and how to fix it in 2023: The biggest challenge that physicians face today is the siloed nature of healthcare. Across various care settings, patient-focused medicine is missing, and the losers of this game will always be the patients and their physicians. Moving forward, we should see more patient data flowing into electronic medical records across all care settings – both inpatient and outpatient. This will enable care teams across the continuum to have the insights they need to better, and more efficiently, care for their patients. By providing informed, superior care from the get-go, this will also help prevent patient readmission and backlogs.

Here’s what we know from decades of research: Hearing loss affects health and well-being, but people with hearing loss are often reluctant to wear hearing aids. Of course, they’re doing themselves no favors. But when they do finally opt for hearing assistance (on average, about seven years after they learn they need it), we also now know that the longer people wear hearing aids — throughout the day, for instance, rather than just in certain situations — the healthier they tend to be. Better hearing leads to greater well-being.

Recently, the World Health Organization estimated more than 1.5 billion people worldwide live with hearing loss, a staggering number that the WHO predicts could grow by 1 billion. The health ramifications could be significant. Hearing loss has been linked to an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and other conditions, and social isolation caused by hearing loss has been linked to depression, cognitive decline, and dementia.

Recognizing the connection between hearing health and general health is critical, but equally important is empowering patients with lifestyle solutions that help strengthen that connection and give people the power to improve their lives through better hearing.

Traditional hearing aids are clearly a solution if patients wear them. But a new class of digital wellness hearing aids is another. The former focuses largely on sound amplification; the latter on enhanced communication, engagement, and overall well-being — through amplification, yes, but also through advanced sound processing, sensor technology, artificial intelligence, and real-time health tracking. A Fitbit for the ears, but better.

Hearing Aids as Fitness Trackers

Several years ago, the first hearing aids to include built-in fitness trackers came to market. In addition to amplifying sound, they could track steps — a notable advance considering the growing market for wearable technology like Apple Watch, Fitbit, and others. Global sales of such wearable devices are expected to grow to $114 billion in 2028 from $36 billion in 2020, according to Fortune Business Insights.

In the years since, hearing aid technology has advanced much further, creating the conditions where hearing aids can serve as universal wellness devices, not only tracking steps, but also monitoring social engagement, overall activity, and actual wear time. When hearing aids become a lifestyle choice and not just a healthcare solution, they can have a more profound effect on well-being. To many, earbuds and wearables are already lifestyle devices. For the billions worldwide who also require hearing assistance, hearing aids that combine lifestyle functions with leading-edge sound processing, clarity, and amplification create a more holistic approach to healthcare.

There are two key ways in which today’s top wellness hearing aids are more advanced than yesterday’s. First is their integration of greater sensor technology for detecting the world around the wearer. Second is innovative processing for distinguishing and enhancing the wearer’s own voice. Each contributes to far greater hearing health, regardless of fitness tracking. Sensors help the hearing aids adjust sound, for instance, when the wearer is in motion. Unique digital processing isolates the wearer’s voice and improves its sound to overcome a common communication challenge of hearing aid users — they hate the way hearing aids make them sound to themselves.

These two hearing technology advances, combined with accelerometer technology that, frankly, does a better job of tracking steps when integrated into hearing aids than worn on the wrist, forms the foundation of this new generation of digital wellness aids. At Signia, we call it My WellBeing and it capitalizes on the innovations we’ve made in hearing health to address general health.

Encouraging Longer Wear Times, Physical Activity

The ultimate goal is to encourage patients to wear hearing aids and wear them longer. Studies show that usage time can help determine perceived benefit, with six or more hours of wear time per day seen as a threshold. And the health benefits of hearing aids are widely known. People tend to be more active when they can better hear environmental cues during their morning jog or gym workout. They engage more with others when they’re confident in their ability to hear and communicate.

Certainly, advances in hearing aid design encourage longer wear times. Electronic miniaturization and leaps in software processing have enabled hearing aid form factors that are far more discrete, even fashionable. And the introduction of easily rechargeable hearing aids has been a big step in encouraging wider adoption. But the incorporation of wellness features stands to further encourage longer, healthier usage.

A Foundation for Hearing Wellness

The wellness features of these hearing aids fall into four areas: wear time, step tracking, activity tracking, and social engagement. The first two are straightforward: Encouraging people to wear their hearing aids longer remains the core goal, and delivering more accurate step counts without a separate tracker are now table stakes for such wellness aids.

The second two represent the further evolution of hearing aids into overall, holistic health platforms. Activity tracking is possible through the various motion sensors currently used to aid sound processing. The sensors can track when a person is engaged in a moderate activity (a brisk walk) or more intense activity (a run).

In and of themselves, advanced motion sensors can greatly improve the hearing experience of hearing aid wearers. When they double as integrated wellness trackers, they can be a game-changer. Better overall health through better hearing health should be the goal of all healthcare professionals. This new category of wearable wellness devices provides that critical link.

About Brian Taylor

Brian Taylor, AuD  is a Doctor of Audiology and Senior Director of Audiology for Signia.  The Signia Augmented Experience (AX) technology platform now includes My WellBeing, a set of features accessible through the Signia app to promote general health. Signia Styletto AX is the first to include My WellBeing.

He is also the editor of Audiology Practices, a quarterly journal of the Academy of Doctors of Audiology, editor-at-large for Hearing Health and Technology Matters and adjunct instructor at the University of Wisconsin. Dr. Taylor has authored several peer reviewed articles and textbooks and is a highly sought out lecturer. Brian has nearly 30 years of experience as both a clinician, business manager and university instructor.