Apple took over headlines on Tuesday with the announcement and reveal of its latest product offerings. Consumers got their first look at Apple Watch, a wearable computer with the capability of serving as a health and fitness monitoring device.
Though the Apple Watch won't be commercially available until 2015, healthcare CIOs are already discussing how the device might make waves in the healthcare industry.
Randy Gaboriault, CIO of Wilmington, Del.-based Christiana Care Health System, said in a Wall Street Journal report that such a device can improve care for patients with chronic illnesses by streaming vitals directly to hospital systems. Such biometric data can be reviewed by predictive analytics software and potentially preemptively address and treat that patient before an adverse health event requires a hospital admission. "Better care costs less money… a technology like that will fit wonderfully on the patient front," Mr. Gaboriault said in the report.
The Apple Watch could also use its biosensing capabilities to dip into the pharmaceutical arena, suggested Questcor Pharmaceuticals CIO Behrooz Najafi in the WSJ report. From the patient medication management side, the watch could track a patient's vitals and send an alert when the indicators fall below normal, suggesting the patient has not adhered to a medication plan, he said. On the company side, if consumers use with Apple Watch with sensor-equipped pills, Mr. Najafi suggested that the watch could track how the medication affects the body, allowing pharmaceutical companies to quantify their drugs outside the laboratory.
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