COVID-19 Driving More Connected Healthcare Adoption, Say Parks Panelists

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated consumer awareness for home healthcare, telehealth services, stay-at-home fitness and whole-home home ventilation, said Parks Associates analyst Kristen Hanich during Parks' virtual Connected Health Summit.

Since March 2020, consumers are much more aware of all aspects of health than they were pre-pandemic with 64% of consumers in Q2 having used a telehealth service in the prior 12 months and 55% adopting a connected health solution. That’s coinciding with an overall increase in technology adoption, including by seniors, a trend that has increased since the onset of COVID, Hanich said. Some 71% of consumers aged 60-69 owned a smartphone in Q2, 35% owned a smart home speaker and 22% a smart home product, she said. Some 62% of seniors 75-plus owned a smartphone, 29% a smart speaker and 15% a smart home product.

Hanich called indoor air quality an emerging opportunity for the smart home industry, after consumers began to look at efforts to reduce virus transmission indoors. In many homes around the U.S. ventilation is “insufficient,” Hanich said, saying homebuilding standards in many states are based on guidelines for energy usage, temperature control and odor rather than the science about healthy exposure to particulate matter, volatile organic compounds, allergens and other potential toxins.

Demand for whole-home air filtration systems has risen to the level of granite countertops and luxury appliances, Hanich said, especially in areas affected by the smoke from recent U.S. wildfires. Homebuilder Taylor Morrison introduced whole home air and water filtration as standard last year, she said. Consumers are unsure, though, about the effectiveness of systems they’re using to filter their air and water, Hanich said: Certification bodies are beginning to gain prominence among appliance makers and homebuilders.

Alarm.com Vice President-Products Steve Chazin said the security system company was the first to put a connected device into a security panel “to get signals out of the home even when the system is not armed” to get a model of normal behavior for a household. The same motion and window sensors used for an alarm system can send data that can be combined with AI, in the company's Wellness Awareness platform, to alert customers to unexpected trends in health behavior, he said. Excessive trips to the bathroom can signal the onset of a urinary tract infection, for instance. The company is extending the Wellness Awareness program through its dealer network so it can be a “simple” add to the backend of a security system, he said: “If we detect something that doesn’t seem normal, we’ll tap you on the shoulder so you can engage.”

EarlySense has a novel sensor that sits under a mattress or cushion, gathering heart and respiratory rate data without the need for a patient to wear a device or have contact with a product. The company began in hospitals and is now moving into homes so people’s remote care teams can monitor them and have insight before a “deterioration event,” said CEO Matt Johnson. Home healthcare used to be handled through a company or remote provider; now EarlySense is looking to identify high-risk patients, engage them in a way they will embrace and work with clinicians with hospital-grade data to keep chronic conditions at bay.

Mark Francis, Electronic Caregiver chief digital health integration officer, said providers and consumers are becoming much more willing to adopt and use electronic health tech, saying the integrity and accuracy of data is “hugely important” for providers to act reliably on the information. He cited a partnership between John Hancock and Apple for the Apple Watch, enabling customers to monitor heart rate, steps, activity -- and over time, accrue policy discounts.

COVID-19 was a “tipping point” for the healthcare industry as restrictions on reimbursement fell away and telehealth went from “a nice to have” to being a permanent part of healthcare, Francis said. Hybrid care models now span the office and the home, he said, and payment models will be built around both to drive adoption.

New reimbursement codes are encouraging people to participate in remote monitoring, said EarlySense’s Johnson. That’s important to get access to people’s data, said Omron Healthcare CEO Ranndy Kellogg. Receiving reimbursement has allowed access for hundreds of thousands of people with Medicare, he said. That will make it possible to do more analytics, he said: “You have to have a lot of data to predict things.” Hypertension is a first sign of future cardiovascular problems, he noted, saying the heart-rate monitoring company is "all about prevention ... all about prediction."

Alarm.com’s Chazin noted consumers are buying devices today that in the past their doctors would have had to prescribe for them, “gladly strapping on devices … to get a better picture of what’s happening to them.” People are taking an active role in their health, helping them feel less disconnected during the COVID-10 pandemic and connecting them to loved ones in the same way they’re using virtual tools to connect with work and school.

On emerging areas in home healthcare, Chazin cited “ambient awareness" -- giving sensors already in the home “double duty” to glean other sets of information. Alarm.com is looking at Wi-Fi extenders that can be used as motion sensors, he said, and sensors placed in smart home hubs could be used for sleep monitoring. Rings, wearables and mattress toppers are helping consumers track what’s going on with them physically. Chazin cited smart toothbrushes and smart coffee mugs that alert users to caffeine intake. All the data from these smart devices will have to “flow somewhere, through systems that can make sense of it.”

EarlySense has a strong interest in ambient sensors for temperature, radar, lidar and audio, said Johnson. “We think there’s a greater opportunity to integrate those in your daily life,” he said. “If you take your blood pressure every day with an Omron device, what else can be gathered from that interaction?” Gait as a person walks around the room or how someone stands on a rug can give health information, he said. “How can we better understand if you are trending towards a negative health event" he said: Giving caretakers insights around those trends days or weeks in advance could help ensure that chronic illnesses "don’t become acute," he said.