Why wearables are the future of EMR/EHR

The days of keeping a journal and daily recording blood pressure for a monthly doctor’s check might actually be gone. Instead, a recent study by Juniper Research expects med wearables to become must haves by 2023. 

Wearables’ ABC

The terms “wearable technology”, “wearable device” or simply “wearables” all refer to electronic technologies or computers that are incorporated into items of clothing or accessories to be worn on the body. Their primary goal is to track and monitor fitness and health data, enabling users to control their exercise, medical and dietary activities and doctors to access a gap-free picture of patient’s health state.

Healthcare wearable tech (HWT) spans heart rate and glucose monitors, pedometers and GPS systems that are now more often than not incorporated into multi-function devices such as smart watches or even smart phones. As part of the Cognitive Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem, wearables offer real-time monitoring, remote collaboration, personalized perspective, and enhanced ability to healthcare actors worldwide. Put simply, a wearable device streams the latest health data directly into your doctor’s office, alerting both parties to negative trending and imminent risks. Based on real-time data sharing, doctors may lend advice directly to their patients in a form of a message or automatically-generated notifications, boosting both patient engagement and preventive care.

Promise and challenge

SmartexLab, a healthcare software developer, refers seamless integration of patient-generated data into electronic heath records as a key challenge for medical providers worldwide. The experts explain that most EHR & EMR systems in place were not designed to handle multiple data points and enterprise-wide workflows and so, fail to fully leverage the benefits of wearable tech. With a long-term view of patient’s overall health and evidence-based care at stake, clinics and private practices opt for a tailor-made EHR & EMR solution in order to enjoy an uninterrupted data flow across all systems.

A fully-integrated EHR & EMR platform sets high water marks for patient data quality and reliability, enabling practitioners to assess patient progress more accurately across a wider timeframe and make information-grounded decisions. From a patient’s point of view, automated data collection requires zero effort, minimizing the number of routine doctor’s visits and expenses.

In the face of abundant data streams, healthcare practices must uphold tight security levels to prevent breaches of protected health information that in case of wearables may be even more complicated and intrusive. Considering that physicians are expected to take immediate action upon alerts, issued by patients’ devices, wearable data cyberattacks pose new liability risks to practicing medicine.

Integrating and protecting the collected data to the EMR & EHR are not the only challenges of the IoT-style healthcare. Practitioners should be willing to accommodate the information from the outside of their offices and develop a tech-friendly skillset to make the most of digital solutions. In particular, they have to switch from specific value analysis to trending analysis and learn to interpret AI-driven insights to perform effective remote monitoring. At the moment, this challenge is most visible on the US healthcare market due to its value-based payment system and personalized approach to patient care.

In the future…

The newest IDTechEx research looks into what the wearable-enhanced future might hold. The promise is increased efficiency, safety, quality and collaboration as well as curbed costs across multiple industries.

In healthcare, wearable tech drives the transition towards intelligence care. HWT feeds data directly into patient’s medical records, saving the trouble of manual input and unlocking full performance potential of the medical staff. Given data abundance, EMR & EHR employ AI-driven data analytics and reporting, reducing the risk of human error and drastically improves delivered patient care quality. Both practitioners and patients will benefit from a more timed intervention in a shift towards preventive care. Especially consumers with white coat hypertension are likely to adopt healthcare tech, upholding the belief in “prevention is better that cure.” Therefore, medical establishments are expecting a gradual rise in eHealth literacy, as HWT adopters are to be informed on how to leverage fitness and health monitors in their well-being, causing active patient engagement and self-management. This mindset change is critical in delivering efficiency synergies, safety and quality growth as well as making high-level healthcare affordable across all society levels.

The takeaway

Digital transformation in healthcare is fuelled by data integration across all systems as well as computer-mediated collaboration between practitioners and patients. This process can’t take place without a continuous information exchange, made possible by complete wearable data integration into EMR & EHR systems. Besides the technical premise, intelligence care requires a mental shift towards preventive care and well-being consciousness.