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With the launch of iOS 15 today, some iPhone users will have the ability to share their health app data directly with their doctors through their electronic medical records. Six health registration companies are participating in the initial launch, and some of those companies are saying that physicians and medical offices in their systems are eager to start using the feature.
People who use this option can use the new sharing feature in the Health app to allow their doctor to view data such as their heart rate and time spent exercising, as collected through the Health application. This could help physicians more closely monitor measurements that might be relevant to a patient’s health without the patient having to take an extra step to manually share information.
One of the launch companies is electronic health records company Cerner, which controls about a quarter of the records market. Right now, all healthcare organizations that use Cerner records must balance the time spent implementing new tools against the time spent dealing with peaks in COVID-19, said Sam Lambson, vice-president. president of corporate interoperability, in an email to The edge. But they’re interested in the functionality, he says. “Once our customer organizations see a demo and understand it, the questions are mostly about how quickly they can implement it,” Lambson said.
A small number of healthcare groups that use electronic health records through Allscripts, which is also part of the launch, have already used the feature as part of a testing phase, said Tina Joros, chief executive and vice-president. -President of the company. They can use it with a few selected patients. “They have all the technology in place, and when it’s available to patients, they can start promoting it to their patient population,” she says.
One of those test groups is particularly excited about the new ability to view patient data from a home blood pressure monitor, Joros says. Doctors in that practice usually recommend a particular brand of blood pressure cuff for patients they want to monitor between visits. This armband is already synchronizing with the Health application. So if patients choose to share the data, doctors are able to directly track these blood pressure readings instead of relying on patients to share them more manually. “It really helps the data come full circle,” she says.
Daniel Kivatinos, co-founder and COO of medical records company DrChrono, says he’s heard similar comments from healthcare providers about the functionality of the Healthcare app. “One of our customers, the supplier, is delighted to be able to perform remote monitoring of patients,” he says.
While the data provided by wearable devices and other health apps can be useful, doctors often say they are concerned about information overload. Joros at Allscripts says the dashboard layout in Apple’s health record could help make the flow of information less overwhelming. The default is to give a general overview of trends in a patient’s Health app. Doctors can see more details, but they don’t have to. “We have had a good response from both our testing customers and our in-house medical staff,” she says. “Both liked the way these dashboards were presented to help reduce that burden. “
DrChrono plans to extend the functionality of the Healthcare application to a first group of initial users before gradually expanding it to its entire customer base, which includes approximately 4,000 medical practices. The company can track how often the feature is used, and Kivatinos said it plans to collect data on the number of patients who end up sharing their health app information on the health record.
Allscripts also plans to collect similar data. The company will be able to see exactly how many patients are using the feature, Joros said. She expects usage to gradually increase in the same way as Apple’s other health records program, which launched in 2018 and allows patients to pull data from their health records onto their iPhones. “We have seen use increase steadily,” she says.
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