The interest in improving the sustained use of wearables goes beyond employer programs, according to the Annals of Internal Medicine study. It also applies to data collection for precision medicine initiatives to better target interventions.
Via Richard Platt
Quantifying the effectiveness of wearables to increase activity within the framework of a payer or employer wellness program has been the source of more than a few studies. Can financial incentives from these groups also steer participants to the desired outcome? Will participants be sufficiently engaged to use these wearables over a long period of time? What are some of the characteristics of the longer term users? This area has been a topic of interest for Dr. Mitesh Patel, an assistant professor of Medicine and Health Care Management at University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine and the Wharton School as well as director of Penn Medicine’s Nudge Unit. But the interest in improving the sustained use of wearables goes beyond employer programs, according to the Annals of Internal Medicine study. It also applies to data collection for precision medicine initiatives to better target interventions. In what Patel said is the largest study of its kind to evaluate the stickiness of wearables in a step counting program, 4.4 million Humana wellness program members were invited to take part. Of those, 55,000 actually downloaded the relevant app for the study, which was published in Annals of Internal Medicine. Researchers analyzed data for a two-year period from 2014-2015 and tracked when participants first activated their activity tracker, how frequently the device was used in the first six months following activation, average daily step counts and sociodemographic characteristics, according to a news release from Penn. In a phone interview Patel said he was struck that although 0.2 percent used the devices in year one, that rose to 1.2 percent in year two. In six months, 80 percent of the people who started using the device were still using it.