Comment by doc99 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by doc99 | Hacker News Reader

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I'm a doctor and I don't see these personal health portals being utilized by physicians. Unless they sync to the docs EMR and they don't have to do anything extra, then they won't be utilized. Doctors don't take/have time to sift through that kind of information for every patient. Too much volume. Too much detail. Docs make decisions based on parcels of data, not continuous streams. Most docs would be shocked by the hourly variance in a patient's pulse and bp and end of overprescribing.

The real use of phrs is for insurance and drug company data mining. Drug companies could perform mass retrospective trials very cheaply, and insurance companies could make huge quality/cost analyses, thereby "directing" healthcare cost and physician treatment.

As a doctor, I actually see these potentials as beneficial, though possibly restrictive for docs until medical education caught up.

Feel free to email me about this to. Kmitch00@yahoo.com

Do you see value in having longitudinal / long-term trend of the pulse, BP, etc? Intra-day variance may be very high, but wouldn't there be value of having an average of 100 measurements over a month, as compared to the 2 measurements that you do in the clinic?

Doesn't mean that the doctor needs to see the data as it goes in - you can review the average BP over 1 month when the patient comes for consultation, for example.

There's a big push right now to implement such systems. Hospitals now have a monetary incentive, due to the ACA, to not have patients return for anything more than a follow up for something like 30 days after an emergency room visit [1]. I'm not sure what Apple has to offer in regards to this kind of data storage, but it's going to have to be HIPAA compliant if they want any sort of acceptance.

Also, a lot of what is being done is automated monitoring. An algorithm can be developed to measure, for example, blood pressure, and if the patient deviates from acceptable ranges, the algorithm can trigger a contact to the patient, their healthcare provider, and family to begin an intervention to correct the bad blood pressure.

Adherance (doing it when you're supposed to) and validity (the measurements reported for Bob Smith are actually from Bob Smith) are big concerns, and there are also a lot of things done to ensure that the patient is doing their part correctly.

[1]: http://www.acep.org/Legislation-and-Advocacy/Practice-Manage...

> Too much volume. Too much detail.

Wouldn't the point be that this is electronic data that can be summarized and analyzed by computers?

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