Smartwatches lead wearables, adoption now at 29%: Parks Associates study

Health tracking and users are leading the way into smartwatch adoption and wearables popularity. In just one year, (Q2 2020 to Q2 2021), smartwatch ownership increased 13 points from 16 to 29% of US households. Fitness trackers, which once predominated, increased five points to 23%, while GPS sport watches grew four points to 11% in US households.

Overall:

  • Smartwatches are dominated by the Apple Watch (1st left), with Samsung’s devices a distant second.
  • Smartwatch owners are particularly likely to own and use other connected health products, with these consumers reporting owning an average of 6.8 devices (including their smartwatch)
  • Most people buy their smartwatches through ecommerce channels–42%–but 30% still use traditional retail. (15% are gifts!)
  • Intent to purchase in the next six months has rocketed from 18% to 45%
  • Apple and Samsung lead all wearable brands under consideration. Curiously, pioneers Fitbit and Garmin are ranked below LG and Sony, which no longer offer wearables. (Fitbit–2nd left–and Garmin need to do some marketing)
  • Fitness trackers/bands hold their own, but GPS sport watches are the weakest of the three categories. Current owners are most likely to seek a new model, with 88% of owners reporting intention to purchase.
  • Most of the intenders are “very likely” to purchase add-on subscriptions for their watch, such as cellular plans (69%) and at-home fitness programs (47%), as long as they are at $10/month. This overlaps into cellular phone providers who need to keep these subscriptions inexpensive.

Parks Associates surveys every quarter 10,000 U.S broadband households, with additional surveys throughout the year. The results represent the national demographics for US broadband households, which are 88% of all US households. To read the full survey results, go to Parks Associates’ survey page.

HIMSS17 news flashes: Lenovo, Orbita, Tactio, Garmin, Parallax, Entra Health, Philips, IBM

Voice commands a new frontier in telehealth. Why not dispense with the pill dispenser, the smartphone, the tablet? Lenovo Health and Orbita have put together a solution that works via Amazon Alexa. The Orbita Voice is a voice-controlled speaker for the home that connects with the Lenovo Smart Assistant to “help patients with chronic and post-acute care needs be more fully engaged in their wellness at home. Enhancing a patient’s ability to access and share information with providers, caregivers, and family members contributes to improved care journey management, treatment adherence, and medication compliance.” The release isn’t informative as to how it will do this, but apparently it’s all in the programming. This is the second Lenovo Health initiative on view in the past few months. This Editor saw at NYeC Digital Health their Authoritative Identity Management Exchange establishing a universal, verifiable patient ID system [TTA 19 Jan video] and was impressed.

Canada’s Tactio telehealth platform is adding Garmin wearables to its compatible peripherals. TactioRPM is a mobile platform that combines mobile apps, hundreds of connected health integrations (Garmin, A&D, Fitbit, Roche, Nonin, Omron and Welch Allyn), patient questionnaires, digital coaching programs and HIPAA-compliant messaging. TactioRPM has FDA Class 1, CE and ANVISA (Brazil) clearances. Release via Yahoo Finance

Parallax Health Management (PHM) is presenting with Entra Health (mobile HIT) and Microsoft Cloud its remote patient monitoring systems. Based on the PHM website, they are tablet based with a raft of peripherals for the multiple-chronic condition patient. The release highlights their chief medical officer, Bob Arnot, MD who is well known in the US as an author and television presenter.

Philips announced US FDA 510(k) clearance of the IntelliVue Guardian software system, which pairs with the single-use, adhesive Philips Wearable Sensor for continuous clinical-grade monitoring of high-acuity patients. The software gained CE Mark certification last October. They also debuted a mobile app called Jovia Coach for healthcare systems to reach patients at risk for Type 2 diabetes. MedCityNews.  Philips’ ongoing Intensive Ambulatory Care (IAC) pilot program with Banner Health in Arizona so far has delivered impressive reductions in overall costs of care by 34.5 percent and hospitalizations by 49.5 percent. LeadingAge/CAST

IBM Watson heralds cognitive computing, or computers that learn, according to IBM CEO Ginni Rometty, and will profoundly change medicine as well as IBM, as they are betting the company on it. In the meantime, they have announced the Watson Platform for Health Cloud and a specialized Watson Health Consulting Services unit. Health Data Management. An elephant in the ointment is that the prestigious MD Anderson Cancer Center, part of the University of Texas, has put their Watson program, the Oncology Expert Advisor, on indefinite hold as it checks out other contractors after sinking $62 million into OEA over three years without a measurable result. Forbes

Tunstall adopts new Tactio in patient management

Tunstall Healthcare is partnering with Canadian mHealth developer Tactio Health Group in what is a distinct first for them: creating a mobile care management system that is 1) smartphone-based for the patient and 2) prominently integrates non-Tunstall apps and devices. The patient uses the smartphone and the Tactio-developed mTrax app to collect a wide spectrum of data–everything from activity, sleep, pregnancy, body fat and mood tracking to the traditional constellation of vital signs. This uploads to the care provider’s tablet mPro Clinical App which overviews, details and reports the data for each patient and patient groups in care. The data comes from well-known mHealth apps outside the Tunstall world: BodyMedia, Fitbit, Fitbug, Garmin, Jawbone UP, Medisana and Wahoo Fitness, as well as connected (presumably Bluetooth) medical devices from A&D Medical, Mio, iHealth, Telcare, Withings and Nonin. Tunstall has also added two-way patient coaching and  health journal features.

Tunstall’s positioning for what they call Active Health Management or AHM is “supported self-management” and “shift(ing) from reactive care to cost-effective active care.” (more…)

The CES of Health (Thursday)

Beaucoup fitness bands and wearables, an ‘all-in-one’ glucose meter and finally, a lack of hype!

[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/razer-nabu-main-banner.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]Mobihealthnews rounds up 18 mobile health launches in a slideshow format (a bit difficult to page through). It’s heavy on fitness monitor bands and wearables from well-known and startup companies at price points from the $100 range up well past $400:  Sony, LG, Garmin, Polar, Razer, Virgin Pulse (clipon), Lumo, iFit, Movea, Wellograph and Epson. (Also see Medgadget’s roundup if you can’t get enough!) Outside of fitness monitors: from China’s iHealth Lab (Andon Health), a blood pressure monitoring vest, an ambulatory ECG device that supposedly sticks to the wearer’s bare chest (no FDA approvals yet); Zensorium Tinke’s pulse oximeter plus for Android (seen by this Editor at New York CES in November 2012), the Qualcomm Life-backed YoFiMeter cellular glucose meter (more below) and the Medissimo Medipac GPS tracking pill box from France. Already covered here: Withings Aura, Qardio, Mother, Kolibree. (more…)