Care Between Visits: Telemedicine and Wearables

A patient with diabetes or heart disease may spend thirty minutes a year with their doctor. The rest of the year, their condition is managed at home, at work, in the pharmacy and on their phone. For most of healthcare's history, that time has been invisible to the people responsible for their care. It does not need to be any longer. This continuity between clinical encounters is at the centre of what I call Connected Care.

Telemedicine has become ordinary

The pandemic made telemedicine a necessity. Since then it has become a normal part of care for many patients, especially for follow-up, minor illness and prescription renewal. Regulators in the region moved early. Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Health made telemedicine one of its main channels of care, including prescribing, and the Dubai Health Authority licenses standalone telemedicine providers.

Younger patients and employees in particular often prefer a digital consultation for routine needs, and text-based and asynchronous services are growing alongside video.

The risk is quality. Convenience can tempt providers into short, transactional consultations or inappropriate prescribing. Telemedicine should complement in-person care, not substitute for it, and should be held to the same clinical standards.

Wearables are becoming research and care tools

Smartphones and smartwatches now record activity, heart rhythm, sleep and much more. Large research programmes have shown what this data can reveal. Studies using phone and watch data from tens of thousands of participants, such as the Apple Women's Health Study run with the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, have produced new insights into links between menstrual cycle irregularity and conditions such as polycystic ovary syndrome and uterine cancer.

For hospitals, the opportunity is to bring this kind of data into the clinical relationship: to spot deterioration earlier, adjust treatment between visits and support patients with chronic conditions at home.

The real challenge is synthesis

The problem is not collecting more data. Clinicians are already overwhelmed. A stream of raw readings from thousands of devices only adds to what I call infobesity: abundant data with no synthesis. The value lies in turning data into a short list of patients who need attention today, and in giving clinicians time to act on it.

Questions for boards and leadership teams

1. What happens to our patients with chronic conditions between appointments, and who is responsible for them?
2. Are our telemedicine services held to the same quality measures as in-person care?
3. If we receive wearable data from patients, who reviews it, and how do we avoid overwhelming clinicians?

Healthcare's next gains will come from the months between appointments, if we use technology to strengthen the relationship rather than replace it.

Further reading: Connected Care: A Digital Transformation Roadmap that Elevates Human-Centred Healthcare (connected.care).