| | OCTOBER 20169UTLOOK Healthcare Tech IoT could improve our understanding of patients and their preferences. The data coming in from IoT will contain the social, personal and physiological information that is likely to define the next baseline of patient/consumer context for self-care. A person's health is strongly influenced by a wide range of environmental and behavioral factors, such as where they live, their social activities, their lifestyle and what they like to do. Through data collected via IoT, the healthcare industry could potentially round out its understanding of patients, gaining the insight that will drive better therapies and improve the effectiveness of population health efforts.IoT could offer critical real-world evidence about the outcomes derived from therapies--which will likely govern healthcare reimbursement in the future. Regulators around the world are increasingly moving towards using real-world evidence (in addition to results from clinical studies) to determine the reimbursement of therapies. IoT has the potential to provide companies with the anonymized patient-level data they need to determine the outcomes and value of their products in the real world, while also offering critical insight that could lead to better science.IoT allows for healthcare organiza-tions to build real-time, personalized en-gagement with consumers and patients that could save and improve lives. As or-ganizations are increasingly accountable to deliver outcomes with their therapies, it will be imperative to see the patient more broadly--in the context of their lives. As such, they will need to also ad-dress patient behaviors--from diet and exercise to adherence and compliance--to enable improved health outcomes. This will require the ability to sense cer-tain conditions and deliver personalized messages to patients--a level of direct engagement and mass customization that would have been too expensive or difficult before IoT. The Art and Science of Choosing What to Wear IoT and wearables make accessorizing more than an art; they transform it into a potentially life-saving science. Imagine the use of fabric-like sensors that people can unobtrusively wear on their skin that sense and transmit heart rate, temperature, breathing, movement or blood sugar levels to doctors and caregivers, who can in turn intervene before a condition becomes more serious. Or what if an organization could actively monitor insulin or exercise levels in a patient with diabetes, and immediately and automatically send personalized recommendations back to the patient (i.e., "you had too much sugar today," "you should increase your activity level," "don't forget to take your pill," etc.)? Such monitoring, particularly for individuals with chronic diseases, could not only improve health outcomes, but also lower costs. Experimenting for the FutureWhile IoT is not without risk, the potential for it to dramatically transform the way disease is treated, diagnosed and prevented is far too great for companies to sit on the sidelines. There are undoubtedly going to be a lot of companies vying to take advantage of this space, so businesses should begin experimenting now and running proof of concepts to gain insight and experience. They should start thinking about the value they can provide or derive throughout the IoT lifecycle and begin building use cases. Only by experimenting and failing will businesses be able to understand the technology enough to positively influence and shape how this space evolves. And, rest assured, it will evolve. HTAccessorizing for Your Health"IoT could offer critical real-world evidence about the outcomes derived from therapies--which will likely govern healthcare reimbursement in the future
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