Digital Health Technology

Digital Communications

• Use of computers and cell phones is linked to higher levels of mental and physical well-being among those over age 80 (11/28/16)
• Patients with chronic conditions sent secure e-mail messages to their providers as a first method of contacting the healthcare delivery, nearly one-third of respondents reported that e-mailing their healthcare providers had improved their overall health, and more than 1 in 3 reported that e-mailing their provider decreased their phone calls to their providers or their in-person doctor’s office visits. (12/21/15)
• 9 in 10 Brazilian doctors use WhatsApp to talk to patients (12/7/15)
• Physicians at Kaiser Permanente received approximately 13 million secure emails from patients in one year. (4/9/14)
• Electronic Communication Improves Access, But Barriers To Its Widespread Adoption Remain (8/13)

Patient Provided Digital Data

• Partners HealthCare allows patients to upload information from their medical devices into their electronic records in doctors’ offices. (7/29/13)

Predictive or Diagnosis Devices

• Study finds wearables may help detect serious illness (1/12/17)
• VA study of heart failure patients demonstrated how AI-based personalized physiology analytics could be applied to wearable biosensor data to predict when a patient might be at risk of hospitalization. (3/12/18)

Smart Phone and Attachments
Technical Help Desk

Text Messaging

• Study: Texting to improve medication adherence shows high engagement (5/16/17)
• Ochsner Health System used automated text messages to patients’ cell phones. Patients could touch a link to connect to a live person to schedule appointment or answer questions. 578 patients scheduled colon cancer screenings, pre-cancerous polyps found in an estimated 145 patients (11/15/16)
• Patients who got texts made it to their appointments 73% of the time, compared to a 66% attendance rate for those who didn’t (10/13/16)
• A text-based smoking cessation intervention improve outcomes among young people. (3/2016)
• Mobile phone text messaging increases medication adherence rates from 50% to 67.8% (3/2016)
• Study: Patients who receive texts from physicians more likely to exercise (12/14/15)
• Text Messaging Intervention to Promote Self-Management for Patients Prescribed Oral Anticancer Agents. Patients had high satisfaction with the texts, and adherence and symptoms improved after the intervention. (11/2015)
• Text messaging can help improve patient risk factors in patients with coronary heart disease (9/22/15)
• 90% of those who received text-based Psychotherapy were doing better on average than those who received no treatment 6/2015)