Time For A Health Tracking Car?

Several years ago, I attended a conference on advanced health technologies in DC. One of the speakers was Dr. Jay Sanders, president and CEO of The Global Telemedicine Group. And he had some intriguing things to say — especially given that no one had heard of a healthcare app yet and connected health was barely a vision.

One of Dr. Sanders’ recommendations was that automobile seat belts should integrate sensors that tracked your heart rhythm. After all, he noted, many of us spend hours a day behind the wheel, often under stressful conditions — so why not see how your heart is doing along the way? After all, some dangerous arrhythmias don’t show up at the moment you’re getting a checkup.

Flash forward to late 2015, and it seems Dr. Sanders’ ideas are finally being taken seriously. In fact, Ford Motor Co. and the Henry Ford Health System are co-sponsoring a contest offering $10,000 in prize money to employees creating smartphone apps linking healthcare with vehicles. While this doesn’t (necessarily) call for sensors to be embedded in seat belts, who knows what employees will propose?

To inspire potential entrants, the Connected Health Challenge sponsors have suggested a few ideas for possible designs, including in-vehicle monitoring and warnings and records access from the road. Other suggestions included appointment check-ins and technology allowing health data to be transmitted to providers. The contest kicks off on January 20th.

In some ways, this isn’t a huge surprise. After all, connected vehicles are already a very hot sector in the automotive business. According to research firm Parks Associates, there will be 41 million active Internet connections in U.S. vehicles by the end of this year.

At present, according to Parks, the connect car applications consumers are most interested in include mapping/navigation, information about vehicle performance, Bluetooth technology and remote control of vehicles using mobile phones. But that could change quickly if someone finds a way to interest the well-off users of wearables in car-based health tracking. (A possible direction for Fitbit, perhaps?)

Ordinarily, I’d have some doubts about Henry Ford Health System employees’ ability to grasp this market. But as I’ve reported elsewhere on Healthcare Scene, Henry Ford takes employee innovation very seriously.

For example, last year HFHS awarded a total of $10,000 in prizes to employees who submitted the best ideas for clinical applications of wearable technology. Not only that, the health system offers employees a 50% share of future revenues generated by their product ideas which reach the marketplace.

Now, it’s probably worth bearing in mind that the wearables industry is far more mature than the market for connected health apps in automobiles. (In fact, as far as I can tell, it’s still effectively zero.) Employees who participate in the challenge will be swinging at a far less-defined target, with less chance of seeing their ideas be adopted by the automotive industry.

Still, it’s interesting to see Ford Motor Co. and HFHS team up on this effort. I think something intriguing will come of it.

About the author

Anne Zieger

Anne Zieger is a healthcare journalist who has written about the industry for 30 years. Her work has appeared in all of the leading healthcare industry publications, and she's served as editor in chief of several healthcare B2B sites.

   

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