Is Home-Based Medical-Data Collection About to Change Healthcare?

Patient data informatics can improve clinical outcomes, but stakeholders will have to build a seamless flow of information and win over skeptical patients.

The digital revolution in the healthcare industry is spreading far beyond the boundaries of the hospital walls.

"People are using smart phones and they are using their Fitbits and other wearables such as the Apple Watch. So people are tracking the basics—how many calories they burn in a day and so forth," says Sanket Shah, a University of Illinois at Chicago adjunct professor in the school's Department of Health Informatics and Health Information Management.

"That activity has exploded over the past five or six years. We are seeing from these examples that there is a market for this technology, and people are willing to engage and interact in generating information that is critical to their health," Shah says.

Health systems, hospitals, physician practices, and healthcare payers are already seizing opportunities to realize the potential of home-based data collection technology, he says. Shah lists weight scales, pedometers, blood pressure cuffs, and glucose monitors as tools for targeting obesity, hypertension and other chronic conditions.

Investing in Population Health Capabilities

"Better clinical outcomes also generate better financial outcomes. You are avoiding unnecessary hospital admissions and visits to the ER because you have a pulse on the patient population."

Data collection through home-based technology is destined to become a key component of the financial mechanisms that support value-based care, Shah says.

"A lot of measures are tracked and leveraged to distribute incentives for not only health systems and other providers but also for patients. Common measures, such as diabetics' a1c levels, will be monitored across all government programs, all ACOs, and all pay-for-performance contracts.

"So if you are leveraging these [home-based] devices that are targeted at core chronic conditions, and the majority of financial measures are tied to these chronic conditions, there is opportunity," Shah says. "You can get a step ahead."

Deploying home-based data collection technology has tremendous potential to boost clinical outcomes and generate financial opportunities. However, there also are tremendous challenges, he says.

Having the proper strategic plan in place—across multiple areas—is crucial.

"First and foremost, you have to pilot programs. You have to identify a particular patient population and start small to see how your patient population is reacting to these medical tracking devices and what you are receiving in terms of data," he says.

"Ultimately, you learn, adapt and evolve to roll out to a larger scale and gain more efficiency and profits."

Evidence Lacking on Efficacy of Home Health Devices

The adage that you have to spend money to make money applies to securing a return on investment from home-based data collection, Shah says.

"You have to have the right infrastructure. These devices have to be integrated not only to your own analytic environment—your claims warehouse and your [electronic medical record]—but also integrated with your online patient portals.

"That seamless flow of data is critical. If you connect those dots properly and lay out a plan, there are opportunities for financial gains."

However, building the robust analytics capabilities to harness the home-based data is a challenge.

"We are getting all this information from these devices, and it is going to take a lot of expertise to sift through it and to identify the salient information so you can make use of it," Shah says.

"You need to create algorithms and predictive modeling based on all of this data that is being collected."

Investing in Population Health Capabilities

There also is the challenge of helping more older patients to embrace new technology. "It is a challenge, but it is not an excuse… You have to have a willingness to work with the individual patient and to establish family support to get our older population more connected," he says.

"If you can show that there is a real benefit, then there is an opportunity to overcome the generational barrier."