CES 2016: Welcome to the Internet of Health Things

Digital Health Summit News Post

Early this month, Karten Design attended the seventh annual Digital Health Summit at CES in Las Vegas, where we heard from industry experts on the hottest topics in digital health and witnessed how connected medical technologies are transforming healthcare and personal wellness. Here are our key takeaways from this exciting event:

1. The Internet of Health Things is here!
The Internet of Things has been growing its presence at CES over the past few years, but this January, it made its biggest splash yet. Hundreds of connected objects and devices filled the exhibit floor space, ranging from smart air quality sensors to intelligent irrigation systems. Most excitingly, we observed IoT making its way into the world of health and wellness: now that a proliferation of sensors has enabled us to track just about every aspect of our lives, technology providers are beginning to connect the dots between data from our everyday objects with information from other sources—such as medical devices, wearable fitness trackers, genomic tests, and even connected toothbrushes—to provide a more complete picture of our health. Welcome to the “Internet of Health Things,” or IoHT!

Two important forces are converging to help fast-track the IoHT promise:

  • Artificial intelligence: We’re in the midst of what William Evans, the Chief Marketing Officer of IBM Watson Health, calls a “knowledge revolution:” the amount of—and demand for—data being generated is outpacing our ability to comprehend it all. This is where artificial intelligence comes into play: powerful data processors, such as Qualcomm’s or IBM Watson’s, can help us analyze and act on this massive amount of information, ultimately enabling us to predict and prevent health episodes and improve our everyday decision-making. For example, Medtronic and IBM Watson can now predict a potentially severe hypoglycemic crash up to three hours ahead of time, based on data gleaned from a patient’s continuous glucose monitor.
  • Wide-open collaboration: Health is not a one-size-fits-all problem, and there won’t be a single-size solution for it, either. If we learned anything at all from CES, it’s that open-source, open-platform collaboration will be the only way to break down data silos, actualize innovation, and add value within the healthcare ecosystem. No company, large or small, will survive the changing connected landscape without working with other industry players. Case in point—the swell of cross-industry partnerships that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago: Philips and Salesforce; Samsung, WellDoc, and Medtronic; Johnson & Johnson and Google; and the list goes on.

In short, we aren’t too far away from a time when everyone will be able to receive personalized, contextualized, and dynamic health and wellness recommendations that help them live better, longer lives.

2. Health is a Lifelong Journey
There’s a growing need for solutions targeted at the beginning and end of life. Prenatal health and age-related conditions such as dementia, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, and Parkinson’s disease dominated conversations on the Digital Health Summit stage. Roughly 40 million people are expected to turn 65 between now and 2050; these individuals, and the caregivers that will look after them, will need better tools and resources from solution providers. On the other side of the spectrum, speakers pointed out that focusing our attention on the beginning of life—especially the first 1000 days of a child’s existence, which are most critical to his or her long-term health—could help prevent people from ever becoming patients at all. Moving up the value chain and practicing preventative care, they claimed, will lead to healthier life journeys and provide greater ROI for the health system overall.

3. Emphasize the User Experience
Technology makers are finally beginning to understand the importance of providing an extraordinary end-to-end user experience. Across the board, we witnessed an elevated focus on the design, packaging, branding, and storytelling surrounding today’s products and services (we found it interesting that the much-discussed virtual reality device, Oculus Rift, was on display inside its box). Many manufacturers have streamlined the installation and setup processes for their products and services, removing frustrating barriers to adoption for users and making it easier than ever to “plug-and-play.” Rather than focusing their marketing on product specs and features—which can be meaningless to lay consumers—exhibitors leveraged relevant, tangible use case scenarios to better contextualize how their products would fit into users’ everyday lives.