While mobile health is becoming popular among patients for tracking, they are not sharing their data.
According to the results of a new mhealth survey that has been released by Mobiquity that has shown that while many patents are embracing mobile health technology as a way to be able to better track and monitor their diets, activity levels, vital signs, and other helpful data, at the same time they are not all that likely to actually volunteer to share that information with their doctors unless those physicians specifically ask for it.
It is now estimated that about 70 percent of consumers are using some form of mobile health tool.
These mhealth devices can consist of anything from wearable technology such as wristbands and smartwatches, to connected pedometers and fitness trackers, or even simply smartphone apps that allow them to enter data about their functions and behaviors every day. That said, while between two thirds and three quarters of consumers have these devices and use them, only forty percent of those that actually have mobile health tools will offer this useful data to their doctors.
One of the primary barriers to sharing mhealth data is a concern over the patient’s privacy.
Though consumers may feel that tracking their health for their own purposes is a valuable activity, they aren’t sure whether or not it is safe for their privacy to actually share it with their physicians, and many don’t realize that their doctors would find that information useful, at all.
According to the survey, they believe that this year will be the year in which smartphone, tablet, and wearable technology based health tools will move from being an area in which only early adopters are taking part, to having it become mainstream. Equally, it added that “before we jump ahead, it’s worth understanding the experiences of today’s consumers and their attitudes toward using smartphones to track their health and fitness.”
Among the 60 percent of patients who retained their data exclusively for their own use and did not share it with their doctors, 73 percent said that it didn’t even occur to them to tell their physicians that they were using mhealth tools and to present the data that they have collected to those medical professionals. Another 11 percent said that they felt that they didn’t feel that their doctors would take their tracking information seriously. At the same time 70 percent of the patients who did share their tracked data said that their doctors were interested in what they had recorded.
