What Are They Doing With Your Fitness Tracker Data?

Telehealth, or online mediated patient care, could very well be the future of healthcare. I don't think most people can yet envision not going to see a doctor when medical issues arise, especially when it comes to young children, but more and more people are giving it a try these days. It's hard not to with so many services and apps popping up that make it just so easy to try.

However, telehealth hasn’t become the future of healthcare without a little help. Aided by several other advances in computing, namely big data analytics and pervasive sensing, telehealth is poised to reinvent how the world provides healthcare. Wearables now enable real time healthcare data collection and big data statistical analysis will provide insights into correlations we haven’t yet imagined. Healthcare is changing faster than it ever has before, and these technologies are at the center of it. And they could make it easier for you to get the care and attention that you need, in a much more convenient way.

"Big data analytics" is a buzz phrase used in recent years to describe how we apply computing and statistical analysis to find patterns in data that is collected, but how do we really understand how big, "big data" is? According to IBM, 2.5 quintillion (1 followed by 18 zeros) bytes of data have been produced in the last two years alone, and that data accounts for 90% of all that has ever been generated. It’s shocking to realize that this exponential increase in data is only beginning to gain momentum, and in a few years the amount of data we’ll be collecting will be even more astronomical.

Just as telehealth is changing the way patients interact with their doctors, the inevitable rise in data analytics is changing the way insurance companies, providers, and prevention specialists classify medical scenarios, prepare for epidemics, and adapt to market shifts. Think of big data as billions of little puzzle pieces; arrange them in the right order and you have a map of world-events, market dynamics, or healthcare trends.

Process the right data with the right tools and we could cure cancer, fix an inefficient system, and save billions of dollars.

Fitness wearables and trackers are the ongoing trend that places data collecting devices into the hands of any consumer. These devices can be anything from a wristwatch to a cellphone to a heart rate monitor, and aim to provide not only real time patient data to providers but also long-term monitoring to ensure the highest standard of care. These medical grade deployments bring the providers to the patients, leaving patients to spend their time keeping healthy instead of commuting to their provider.

So what do these technologies imply for telehealth?

Big data and wearables further decrease the distance between patient and provider, essentially eliminating the criticism leveled against telehealth protocols that a long-distance video consultation is sharply limited compared to an in-person consultation.

In a remote consultation a doctor may not be able to check the patient's pulse, but now that wearable biometric sensing technology is coming into play, everything changes. Based on one study by the research group ICD, wearable health tracking devices are expected to ship 118 million units by 2018. Doctors are taking interest in them as a viable new means to provide on-the-spot biometric data about their patients. Wearable health tracking is a logical extension of telehealth services, one that will only increase with time.

Big data analytics is a natural extension for telehealth as well, allowing providers to make incredibly informed decisions about a patient’s health. Over time, with help from wearables, a clinician will be able to assemble a longitudinal, robust dataset of a patient's metrics and physiological condition without even being in the same room.

To be able to log in to a web-based telehealth platform like TruClinic to meet with your provider who has not only seen your health record, but a fully analyzed real time data set of how you feel now and how you’ve been will revolutionize the quality of health care.

Many of these technologies are already working together to help patients around the world, it is only a matter of time before everyone else catches on.