It is increasingly exciting to
see that mobile and wereable apps, digital tools, technologies and services are
empowering patients to take care and charge of their health in real-time and help
interact with the system on their own terms.
The momentum is powerful while
at the early stage with emerging technologies that are helping to streamline
each experience.
According to the results of a survey by Accenture , the number of consumers who use mobile health apps
increased from 16 percent in 2014 to 33 percent today, and the number of
consumers who use health wearables increased from 9 percent to 21 percent
during the same time.
The survey reveals that, most consumers
use wearables to track their health, such as fitness or vital signs.
The vast majority
(90 percent) of consumers said they would be willing to share wearable or
app data with medical providers.
Nearly one-third (29 percent)
of consumers in the most-recent survey said they prefer virtual doctor
appointments to face-to-face doctor
appointments. However, physicians and
consumers alike believe that virtual visits provide benefits for patients, such
as lower costs (58 percent of consumers vs. 62 percent of doctors), convenience
(52 vs. 80 percent) and timely access to care (42 vs. 49 percent).