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Apple has made health – and helps people keep an eye on them – a cornerstone of how it presents the benefits of its new Apple Watch, and we are now learning a new way to take shape. Zimmer Biomet, a world leader in the development of joint replacement components and systems, says it is working with Apple on a new clinical study focusing on patients with knee and hip replacements.
The trial will take place in three stages and, in the next two years, Zimmer estimates that there should be up to 10,000 people involved, said Ted Spooner, vice president of connected health of Zimmer, in an interview .
He will cover three aspects of patient care, he said: monitor patients before and after operations using sensors on the Apple Watch and the iPhone; provide education and information to patients to help them improve their care before and after the operation; and providing a communication channel between doctors, caregivers and patients to ask questions, give answers, and more, using Zimmer's Mymobility app.
Participating institutions include the University of Utah Health; Rush University Medical Center; Health System of the University of Pennsylvania; Emory University Orthopedics & Spine Hospital / Emory Healthcare; Hoag Orthopedic Institute in Southern California; Newton-Wellesley Hospital, a member of Partners HealthCare founded by Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women's Hospital; Centura Health, Porter Hospital – Joint Replacement in Colorado (RCC); ROC Orthopedics, affiliated with Legacy Meridian Park Medical Center; OrthoBethesda; OrthoArizona; Midwest Center for Joint Replacement; Hartzband Center for Hip and Knee Replacement; New Mexico Orthopedic Associates; DeClaire LaMacchia Orthopedic Institute, affiliated with Michigan Institute for Advanced Surgery; Joint implant surgeons; Orthopedic and fracture clinic; Orthopedic panorama and spine.
The study, which will be for the moment reserved for the United States, comes after Zimmer's two-year collaboration with Apple behind the scenes, Spooner said, making sure not only that the parameters of that that Zimmer hoped to achieve in a connected app are possible, but It is also up to Apple to understand what the health industry stakeholders would like to see come out of a health service built around a smartwatch and a smartphone. Zimmer was a key target because today, it represents one out of every four knee replacements in the world and occupies a similar position in the hip, shoulders, feet, dentistry and spine market. spinal.
To find out how important Apple is to this study, comment on the launch of this study.
"We believe that one of the best ways to empower consumers is to give them the opportunity to use their health and activity information to improve their care," said Jeff Williams, director of the operation, Apple, in a statement. "We are proud to allow patients who have had knee and hip replacements to use their own data and share it seamlessly with their doctor so that they can participate in their care and treatment." their recovery in a way that had not been possible before thanks to traditional in-person visits. This solution will connect consumers with their doctors constantly, before and after surgery. "
Hip and knee replacements are the most common "replacement" procedures. They represent a million operations each year in the United States, according to Deloitte, which will grow to 3.5 million by 2035 as our population grows and stays alive longer. , and includes more people who have been much more active in their early years in a broader recovery for fitness.
You might assume that it would be difficult to sell the idea of elderly connected health services, which are the typical recipients of these operations, but Spooner said the opposite was the case.
"It turns out that the fastest adoption group for smartphones is currently 55 to 64 years old," he said, stating that they are currently buying smartphones and other smartphones. connected devices three times faster than the next group. This may be partly due to the fact that older people have been slower to adopt, but he nonetheless pointed out that the statistics "are truly staggering, given that the compound annual growth rate of the other groups is less than two percent. he said, have a similar growth rate among the elderly. "When they use it, their utility is greater than in younger populations and people are so sensitive to their health as they grow, that we thought it was the right time to do what we do. "
The fundamental problems that Zimmer and Apple hope to solve are to make sure that patients are better able to follow their treatment, and in cases where something has not been planned, people are able to identify and act accordingly. . Part of the system will involve a larger dashboard and analyzes for doctors and caregivers to help assess the situation of people between appointments in person.
On the patient side, they will receive alerts before their operations, suggesting activities they should do to stay active before surgery. And doctors will be able to control how well they actually do it, by looking at things like movement, heart rate, and especially doing basic tasks like standing up during the day. The same will continue after the operation. During all this time, a patient will also be able to contact his medical team if he is worried about for example the appearance of a scar, although Spooner has stated that he is not safe. 39; was not sure that this was conceived as the main case of use and education.
Zimmer's collaboration and closer collaboration with Apple comes at a time when medical companies – like those in so many other industries – are realizing that they need to jump on the innovations brought about by the ramp-up digital services so as not to be excluded from the market. whatever the future holds for medicine and health care. Spooner says that he came to Zimmer through RespondWell, a start-up that he founded and focused specifically on this challenge.
"We were on the market trying to figure out what kind of biometric data collection was available so that we could continually measure patients to use this data to better understand the conditions and how to work with caregivers," he said. -he declares. The startup was using Microsoft Connect, "| but at the same time, Zimmer had preliminary conversations with Apple. We went to Cupertino with the idea of a common vision, and that is what led to this collaboration. "
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