Craig Federighi, vice president of Software Engineering Apple introducing HealthKit during a press conference in June
Apple is preparing a new iPhone (or maybe more phones) start next week with a new version of its iOS application that contains a "health" for storing medical and health data. It also comes with a tool called HealthKit that software developers can use to hang on applications and tracking devices, such as various fitness Fitbit or Nike FuelBand that people have used to increase your heart rate, calories, cholesterol and sugar blood, and consolidated into a single dashboard.
Apple has also in talks with various health systems and provider of electronic medical records (including Epic Systems, we use at the University of Chicago Medical) have been if the data could be directly integrated with the personal health records of a patient.
The idea is that doctors can monitor data of all the hot spots, and use it to make better decisions about the treatment of a patient. But they are months worth of data on the number of steps a patient or the amount of carbohydrates you eat every day for a doctor? And they are capable of anything to do with it?
Ari Levy, MD
Ari Levy, MD, is Associate Medical Director of the University of Chicago Medical program for health and personal intervention to help patients to changes in diet, lifestyle, physical activity, to do etc., to prevent and treat diseases, the exact nature of the changes, the doctors could induce after reviewing the data generated by these applications and devices.
He said the value of this data is that there is a doctor give you an insight into the reasons for the daily life of patients. Instead of relying on self-report, which may be unreliable, they are the data can watch to learn the real story. So, if a patient shrugs his shoulders and says: "I work a few times a week", the doctor may increase your heart rate and calorie consumption figures look from week to week to see if it is really true.
The trick to the doctor then said Levy, is this revelation into what he make an "easy time to train."
"If the business model is very consistent too long, or does something that is outside the norm, then the question arises, what happens," he said.
But he says many doctors are not trained today to work this way.
"That's what I like the competition of medicine, or the arts to call a doctor, into the picture. But in fact, this is where I think the doctors have many restrictions," he said. "Simply put, we are not trained to examine the data in this way, is where many of us can go wrong.
Levy is also CEO of Healthcare Solutions rented a healthcare company that began with William Harper, MD, medical director of health and personal intervention, and President and COO companies. Obliged Health provides advice and training support to companies in the health and to help the well-being of their employees. He said, these moments are coachable actually used by dietitians, athletic trainers and behavior specialists who know how to help people, their habits for the better, not necessarily change doctors.
If physicians are willing to use it with iPhones begin monitoring their own health data experimentation or not, soon millions of people. And enough attention to your body, counting calories and steps can not be a bad thing to do as long as you can with the data long enough sense to hold on to. Levy said that the application data tracking fitness shows that drops steeply after the first 30 days and almost zero at the end of six months.
"This is the marketing strategy for these devices: Everyone wants something that is good," he said. "But I will regularly? And I am going to learn and change, and with him?"