This morning we have added lots more devices and app integrations into your PKB account. You can now automatically upload your weight using a Vitadock pair of scales; track your heart rate using a Withings pulse; monitor your blood oxygen levels using iHealthbeat‘s oximeter; upload your glucose measurements using your iPhone. All these devices are available from your local pharmacy chain or on Amazon for $100-200.
And your doctor will love you for providing these data because they need the data accurately and urgently to give you accurate timely advice about how to change your treatment without making you travel all the way to the hospital. Paper diaries are no good for this. Not only are they difficult and late to analyse for clinicians, but they are also known as “car park diaries” because patients fill them out in the car park just before the appointment. Paper is inconvenient for everyone, while these devices will automatically and instantly upload the data.
You can also add data points never previously stored in the medical record. Later this month, fitness activity, nutritional information and sleep monitoring data will also appear in your PKB account from devices like Fitbit. Accessing diet and exercise information transforms diabetes consultations. Combined with our integrations with hospital laboratory systems to show HbA1c results, and coaching platforms like Know Your Own Health, your health coach can transform your habits which can transform your health.
For clinicians, these devices will transform telemedicine. Around the world, patients with heart failure are monitored by nurses visiting their homes to weigh them. A $200 pair of scales that transfers data immediately allows a single nurse to monitor hundreds of patients simultaneously, and to focus on the ones who need help.
Previous telemedicine efforts have been expensive failures because each started from a medical device with a closed system. The devices were too expensive to give out to most patients, and too annoying for all of them. The devices were designed standalone, and their designers built everything around the device, except they forgot to include the patient. By contrast, the devices that PKB integrates with are open, transferring their data to PKB, and are patient-friendly, built with the consumer in mind. They are cheaper not just because they are sold in their millions, but because they actually work.
The data will also transform research. As we work with registries like UNC Chapel Hill’s inflammatory bowel disease research team layers on the traditional medical record and real-time real-life data from devices that study participants buy. Analysing all these data points should bring us closer, faster, to understanding and curing diseases.
To use the new feature, log into your account, click on Apps, then Devices. Then click on the “Add device” button.
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