Reflections on the Connected Health Symposium: The need for better targeted devices

Recently I attended the Center for Connected Health’s 2010 Connected Health Symposium (CHS10). I was part of a panel on Thursday afternoon with Mathew Levy of Harvard and Tracey Moorhead of Care Continuum Alliance. Members of the Healthrageous team manned our booth, answering questions about our service and facilitating a friendly competition between about 70 attendees who tracked their steps and monitored their progress on our mobile phone app for iPhone, Android, and Blackberry smart phones.

A few days later, I found myself reflecting on the experience. Beyond the diverse and topical speakers, I had the chance to interact with a variety of vendors demonstrating mobile health devices. From my vantage point, as the head of a company delivering a personalized connected health solution, I see device manufacturers continuing to struggle with two major issues:

1. The “If we build it, they will come” syndrome. This view unfortunately persists, with health and wellness device makers delivering systems with overloaded feature sets with as much complexity as TV remote controls. As was noted in one of the CHS panels, too much choice is not a good thing. In response to such overload, consumers often do nothing.
2. The targeting of health addicts and fitness freaks. Don’t get me wrong – it’s great to support exercise enthusiasts.  The problem is that targeting self-starters with these devices misses the huge opportunity to make a serious change in overall health. Over two-thirds of Americans are either obese or overweight. Some are trying to ward off chronic diseases, while others have been recently diagnosed with Type II diabetes or hypertension. These people need devices to monitor and encourage them to live healthier lifestyles, but today’s device manufacturers largely ignore them.

Developing easy-to-use, accessible, and unobtrusive devices for those with health issues – the people that are a significant liability for employers and health plans – remains the Holy Grail in my industry. Healthrageous, with our device agnostic mantra, longs to find and support devices that meet the aforementioned criteria in order to positively impact those who are the biggest source of costs to the country and to the payers.