Prior to Parks Associates’ sixth-annual Connected Health Summit: Independent Living and Wellness, Anne Weiler, CEO, Wellpepper shared her thoughts on the connected health market with the firm's analyst team.
Anne will participate on the Expanding Reach: Making Remote Patient Monitoring Work panel on Wednesday, August 28, at 3:45 PM. Panelists who will join her on this session include:
- Amy Cook, Director, Business Development, Sleep Marketing, ResMed
- Spencer Moore, Vice President, Sales & Marketing, Rapid Response Monitoring Services
- Tad Reynes, Global Director, IoT Healthcare Solutions, AT&T
- Joe Smith, MD, PhD, CEO, Reflexion Health
What is driving early consumer use of telehealth/virtual visit services? What factors most impact the experience?
Telehealth, virtual visits, and asynchronous check-ins are all driven by need and convenience. When it can take weeks to get an appointment with primary care, telemedicine can fit the bill. It’s also great to have remote check-ins and monitoring for people who have mobility issues: seniors or people recovering from surgery. Not everything needs to be in person, and telehealth has the added benefit of not spreading germs, for example, for people with the flu.
What needs do seniors have as they age that could be ad dressed by new IoTsolutions? How open are they to assistive technologies, products, and services?
In our experience, seniors are very open to technology that helps them manage their health. Reminders, instructions, and interactions that help them to follow a care plan show high rates of adherence and adoption with seniors. Seniors are our most adherent group within Wellpepperinteractive care plans. Most people want to remain independent, so are open to technologies, including voice, mobile, and web interfaces, that enable them to stay in contact with care givers, and manage their own health. One of the key things we find in designing for seniors is to make the technology easy to use, and accessible, but don’t “dumb it down.”
What are top caregiver pain points? Are caregivers willing to pay for independent living solutions?
Caregivers are looking for ways to stay in touch with the people they are caring for but without too much data. It’s really the same for how healthcare providers are looking at it. They want key indicators to know how the person is doing, and not to be overwhelmed by data. Today we see people spending money on private homecare. In the future they will also demand this homecare is augmented by technology solutions.
