Step into a world where the focus is keenly set on How Is The Future Of Healthcare. Within the confines of this article, a tapestry of references to How Is The Future Of Healthcare awaits your exploration. If your pursuit involves unraveling the depths of How Is The Future Of Healthcare, you've arrived at the perfect destination.
Our narrative unfolds with a wealth of insights surrounding How Is The Future Of Healthcare. This is not just a standard article; it's a curated journey into the facets and intricacies of How Is The Future Of Healthcare. Whether you're thirsting for comprehensive knowledge or just a glimpse into the universe of How Is The Future Of Healthcare, this promises to be an enriching experience.
The spotlight is firmly on How Is The Future Of Healthcare, and as you navigate through the text on these digital pages, you'll discover an extensive array of information centered around How Is The Future Of Healthcare. This is more than mere information; it's an invitation to immerse yourself in the enthralling world of How Is The Future Of Healthcare.
So, if you're eager to satisfy your curiosity about How Is The Future Of Healthcare, your journey commences here. Let's embark together on a captivating odyssey through the myriad dimensions of How Is The Future Of Healthcare.
Apple's Health app keeps evolving, with aspirations to be a complete combination personal data archive, medical liaison and insight engine. But the goals, while ambitious, aren't fully realized yet. iOS 16 and WatchOS 9 are adding medication management and multistage sleep tracking to a growing list of features. But what comes next, and will it start to become a tool that interfaces with doctors even more than it has?
Apple just published a multipage health report (PDF), which aims to detail where the company sees its health focus heading on the iPhone and the Apple Watch. The report covers the app, research studies and initiatives with medical organizations.
As Google prepares to release a Pixel Watch that will connect to Fitbit's features and services, Apple looks to be strengthening its position by expanding beyond the watch to a larger spectrum of health services. Already, Apple Health and Fitness Plus are evolving into services you don't need an Apple Watch to use.
When will Health start to become an extension of how I connect with my own doctors? Will sleep tracking offer a doorway to other health insights? And why doesn't Apple have its own equivalent of the "readiness score" used by Fitbit and Oura?
Apple's vice president of health, Dr. Sumbul Desai, spoke with CNET about the goals of Apple Health and where goals are being set next. She sees the blend of lifestyle with clinical data, medication data and an increasing number of metrics in one place as helping future insights in other health measurements over time.
"You have to do it in a really thoughtful and meaningful way," Desai said. "Because there are also correlations you can make that are incorrect. That's where the work is, making sure that when you make those connections that they are correct, grounded in the science and make sense to the user."
Medication tracking on iOS 16 looks like another step to bring medical histories onto Health.
Apple
Where does Apple Health meet your doctor?
As I've found over the last few months, over several surgeries and doctor visits, my own medical care doesn't often connect with my wearable and phone apps. Apple's been aiming to make strides to connect Apple Health with medical providers, but the framework isn't fully there yet for digital health platforms. A lot of Apple's promised benefits are in identifying long-term data patterns and insights.
"I do think how they interact with each other is really important," said Desai, who points to the new tracking of atrial fibrillation patterns over time in Watch OS 9. "We are actually taking how much time you're in AFib and correlating it to your lifestyle. How much you're sleeping. How much you're moving, you'll see the changes in AFib. If you're using Mindful Minutes, do you see a change."
Apple has tried making data sharing easier with doctors, but right now it still doesn't go far enough. At the medical group where I'm a patient, for instance, there's no obvious way to share the data I'm collecting in Apple Health through the patient portal.
Sleep tracking is gaining sleep stages in WatchOS 9. Will that bring a wave of other health insights down the road?
Apple
Sleep as the next frontier?
Apple's addition of sleep stage-based sleep tracking in the upcoming Watch OS 9 looks to close the gap on other fitness trackers like those from Fitbit, Samsung and Oura. Apple's been pulling new features for the Apple Watch from work in some of the company's ongoing heart research studies, and sleep could end up being a place that evolves next.
"What I'm really excited to learn from a scientific standpoint is, does the amount of sleep that you're getting in certain stages, like core [replenishing sleep], does that actually translate to benefit during the day when you're moving?" Desai said. "Are there certain phenotypes of certain people who have more benefit versus others? There's so much to tackle from a research standpoint there. We would never put anything out until we knew we kind of had some scientific grounding. The whole causation-correlation thing can get very tricky."
Desai suggested future research combining sleep stage data with Apple's ongoing heart and move data from its ongoing study will possibly provide more insights, "but we're still a ways away from that."
Could Apple ever develop its own readiness score?
One thing Apple's evolving and elaborate set of Health insights currently doesn't have is any sort of attempt at a distilled score, or personal health rating. Fitbit, Oura, and a number of other wearables have daily personal scores derived from a variety of individual metrics. I asked Desai whether Apple might pursue a similar idea anytime soon. While it sounds like a direction Apple Health could head in, it also seems like Apple is still trying to lock down the best path to get there.
"It's a really good question. I think the answer is, to be honest, is we don't have a firm POV yet," Desai said. "We want to understand the science behind that, and what can we understand and glean from a scientific standpoint."
Desai suggests that the health measurements, and their meanings, can vary. "HRV [heart rate variability] is a great metric. I'm super fascinated by HRV. But HRV can be changed based on multiple reasons." She suggested that Apple's eventual evolution of its insights will need to come with clear guidance, too.
"I think for us, we want to be able to provide actionable information. So to understand to do that, you actually have to be able to draw it back to, what we think is actually causing that? We are really trying to understand the science behind all of these different metrics and focus on how we provide insights that we know we can back up."
On whether Apple Health could come to other non-Apple devices
Apple's aiming for Health to be a comprehensive, secure system for anyone to use, but it still flows through Apple hardware, which means a portion of the population will always be left out. I asked Desai whether Apple Health might ever be available beyond iPhones.
"We're always looking at ways to support the ecosystem. We just want to make sure we can support that in a private and secure way. That's fundamentally what drives our decision making," Desai said. "We have a ton of things in the App Store ecosystem that are super interesting that people are doing, and we're very supportive of supporting that work.
"Honestly, we make a lot of decisions driven by privacy. And there's a lot of things we choose not to do and choose to do, based upon that."
The information contained in this article is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as health or medical advice. Always consult a physician or other qualified health provider regarding any questions you may have about a medical condition or health objectives.
Changes coming in 2022 what would you change in the world the world as will in the ways of the world 5 ways the periodic table is organized 5 ways the rich can avoid the estate tax 5 ways to reduce stress
5 ways the world will change in 2022: CNET's predictions for the year ahead
5 ways the world will change in 2022: CNET's predictions for the year ahead
This story is part of The Year Ahead, CNET's look at how the world will continue to evolve starting in 2022 and beyond.
Even before the momentous events of 2020 and 2021 shook up the planet, the tectonic plates of culture, society and technology were already shifting and reshaping the world. The pandemic took those changes and accelerated them, exacerbated them, and in some cases, threw them into chaos.
As we speed into 2022, one question remains: Where are we headed next?
In tech, health, money, transportation, home and family life, we can be confident of one fact: Things are changing, fast. As in years past, CNET has its finger on the pulse of the ever evolving world and we're confident our CNET: The Year Ahead stories will help you navigate these choppy waters.
During this three-week series -- which will include CES -- we'll especially tackle five themes that will shape 2022.
1. The pandemic and the future of health
COVID-19 largely caught the world by surprise. When the World Health Organization declared the pandemic on March 11, 2020, few of us suspected that it would lead to two years of shutdowns, social distancing and disruptions. Things appeared to be normalizing in mid-2021, but then the Delta variant -- and later the Omicron variant -- touched off renewed shutdowns.
Will 2022 be the year that COVID-19 transitions from a pandemic to an endemic? That's what we're all hoping, of course, but there's no going back to 2019. For example, expect more of the world to follow Asia's lead, where people have been wearing masks in public for years if they were sick (out of courtesy to the people around them) or immunocompromised.
And, healthcare will never be the same post-pandemic. Expect telehealth to become commonplace now that a lot more people have been exposed to using video calls for health visits. And the COVID-19 vaccine will forever change the way vaccines (and potentially other therapies) are created. It's not unusual for vaccines to take a decade to develop, but these were created in 10 months using genetics and mRNA technology. This could prove to be one of the most important medical breakthroughs of the century.
2. Hybrid work and the 'Great Resignation'
Work and school were perhaps the most disrupted aspects of life during the pandemic. While schools largely returned in-person, work has been a far slower process. Many employees have decided that they prefer the work/life balance of remote work and many have migrated to be closer to family or moved farther away from city centers to have more space and fresh air.
Meanwhile, many employers have become infatuated with the productivity gains of remote work and the ability to scale down their commercial real estate holdings for significant cost savings.
The most surprising trend that's likely to continue to gain steam in 2022 is the Great Resignation. More people are quitting their jobs and reprioritizing their lives than ever -- CNET's Farnoosh Torabi even has advice. In December, the US Labor Department reported that the number of people quitting their jobs remains at record high levels. How could we go through something as jarring as the pandemic for the past two years and not be changed by it? The Great Resignation is just one example of how those changes are manifesting themselves.
3. Crypto, inflation and what's next for your finances
Money and personal finance also remain in the midst of tectonic shifts. In November, inflation hit its highest level since 1982 at 6.8%. The inflation of real estate and cars will be closely watched in 2022, after eye-watering numbers in 2021. The stock market's bull run looks likely to continue with interest rates at such low levels, but its volatile swings are getting more pronounced. There's a big question about whether tech and other growth stocks have run out of steam or are getting ready for another run.
Speaking of growth, cryptocurrencies have been breaking new highs and attracting more interest. The crypto exchange app Coinbase passed TikTok and YouTube to become the most downloaded app in Apple's App Store a couple times during 2021. Some view the world's most popular cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, as a hedge against inflation. Politicians, athletes and others started taking their paychecks in Bitcoin in 2021. We'll see if your employer will offer you that option in 2022.
4. Space, travel and the next internet
One of 2022's most dramatic developments is the new space race. China and Russia are collaborating on a future moon base (in 2030) as well as landing a robot on an asteroid (in 2024). Not to be outdone, NASA announced its next 10 future astronauts in December with ambitions for a future Moon mission.
Private space companies SpaceX, Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic all sent civilians into space in 2021, and they are all teasing the promise of a future of space tourism. Their ambitions will get bigger in 2022. This will be the year that SpaceX plans to put its Starship reusable rocket and space vehicle into flight for its first missions. Speaking about Starship, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said, "This is a profound revolution in access to orbit. There has never been a fully reusable, orbital launch vehicle. This is the holy grail of space technology. It is the fundamental breakthrough that is necessary for humanity to become a space-faring civilization."
Meanwhile, SpaceX's StarLink and Blue Origin and Amazon's Project Kuiper will launch thousands of low orbit satellites into the atmosphere in 2022. Their mission to bring fast, reliable broadband internet at a reasonable price to every corner of the planet is a welcome advance. But, the side effect is tons of space debris that could disrupt astronomers' telescopes, collide with spacecraft and create massive amounts of space junk. Apparently, they've never watched the movie Wall-E.
5. The EV has arrived -- and it means business
Electric vehicles, or EVs, are poised for a huge year in 2022 after a number of breakthroughs in 2021, including the Tesla Model 3 becoming the bestselling vehicle in Europe in September. The writing is on the wall for fossil fuel-burning vehicles. The US will discontinue purchases of gas-powered vehicles by 2035, the UK will do so by 2030 and a broader coalition of countries have set 2040 as a global date for ending fossil fuel vehicles.
Musk, also the CEO of Tesla, predicted that the Tesla Model Y compact SUV will become the bestselling vehicle worldwide in terms of revenue in 2022 -- beating out the Ford F-150 pickup and the Toyota Corolla compact. But the biggest EV story of 2022 is likely to be the transition in trucks, with the Chevy Silverado EV, Ford F-150 Lightning, Tesla Cybertruck and Rivian R1T dominating the headlines.
Consumers should also keep in mind that a gas-powered vehicle you buy today could have its resale value drop steeply in the years ahead as demand plummets because of people transitioning away from old combustion engine technology to EVs.
The future
The changes sweeping across the planet will not slow down in 2022, even if the COVID-19 pandemic finally recedes to become endemic. Beyond the five big themes mentioned above, CNET: The Year Ahead will cover a wide range of topics to help you get your head around what's coming.
We'll leave you with one last topic you should expect to hear a lot about in 2022: the metaverse. Plenty of us would love to step into a version of the holodeck from Star Trek, and it's hard not to notice the explosion of online gaming during the pandemic. But let's keep our metaverse expectations low for 2022. A lot of work needs to be done to build better virtual reality headsets and an ecosystem of truly immersive virtual worlds. If we get a few encouraging glimpses of the metaverse in 2022, we should count ourselves pretty happy.
§
Test pilots. Engineers. Physicists. A US National Team cyclist. A SpaceX flight surgeon. NASA announced its 2021 class of 10 future astronauts on Monday, and they're a diverse group of high achievers. NASA calls them the "Artemis generation" because they're likely to be heavily involved in future Artemis-program missions to the moon.
"The women and men selected for the new astronaut class represent the diversity of America and the career paths that can lead to a place in America's astronaut corps," the space agency said in a statement.
NASA's candidates, the first ones since 2017, were chosen out of a pool of over 12,000 applicants and received their official introductions during an event near the Johnson Space Center in Houston. You can watch the replay here:
The candidates will kick off two years of intensive training in January. They will learn how to operate equipment for the International Space Station, prepare for spacewalks, advance their robotic skills, learn or improve their Russian language and operate a training jet. The reward for all that work could be trips not just to orbit, but possibly all the way to the moon.
Nichole Ayers is a major in the US Air Force and a combat aviator with experience in the F-22 fighter jet. "Ayers led the first ever all-woman formation of the aircraft in combat," NASA said.
Marcos Berrios, also a major in the US Air Force, is from Puerto Rico. Berrios is a test pilot and aerospace engineer.
Christina Birch has a doctorate in biological engineering from MIT and is a track cyclist on the US National Team.
Deniz Burnham is a lieutenant in the US Navy and a former intern at NASA's Ames Research Center in California. Burnham has a background in mechanical engineering and experience as a drilling-projects manager.
This patriotic view shows an American flag with the SLS rocket at NASA's Kennedy Space Center. SLS will power the Artemis moon missions.
NASA/Frank Michaux
Luke Delaney is a retired major in the Marine Corps with experience as a naval aviator and test pilot. Delaney is familiar with NASA after having worked as a research pilot at the agency's Langley Research Center.
Andre Douglas has a collection of engineering degrees from multiple universities. "Douglas served in the US Coast Guard as a naval architect, salvage engineer, damage control assistant, and officer of the deck," NASA said.
Jack Hathaway, a Navy commander, is a distinguished aviator with "more than 2,500 flight hours in 30 types of aircraft."
Anil Menon also has an Air Force background and was SpaceX's first flight surgeon. "Menon is an actively practicing emergency medicine physician with fellowship training in wilderness and aerospace medicine," NASA said.
Christopher Williams is a medical physicist and researcher studying image guidance techniques for cancer treatments.
Jessica Wittner, a lieutenant commander in the Navy, spent her military career as an aviator and test pilot.
Most of the candidates are in their 30s. Delaney and Menon are in their 40s. NASA has stringent requirements for its future astronauts. They must be US citizens, pass a rigorous, long-duration flight astronaut physical, and hold a master's degree in a science, technology, engineering or math field, along with at least three years of related experience.
Each candidate spoke briefly during the event. Many of them talked about people who inspired them, the excitement of space exploration and the importance of teamwork. Berrios took a different route. He said he would like NASA to scale up the Ingenuity Mars helicopter to carry people, though that's probably a pipe dream.
NASA is hoping to launch its first uncrewed Artemis I test mission next year. Berrios may not get to fly a helicopter on Mars, but he might touch his boots down on the moon one day.
What has the pandemic changed people have changed since the pandemic how the pandemic has impacted healthcare how the pandemic has impacted healthcare the pandemic changed health care how has the pandemic changed healthcare how has healthcare changed since the pandemic the pandemic the pandemic institute
The pandemic changed health care, and there's no going back
The pandemic changed health care, and there's no going back
This story is part of The Year Ahead, CNET's look at how the world will continue to evolve starting in 2022 and beyond.
If the pandemic has taught us one thing, it's how to take our health into our own hands.
We've become our own triage nurse, analyzing a sore throat with such urgency that, in another time, would've been considered a little obsessive. We've been asked to monitor our temperatures and even become citizen public health surveyors with the help of at-home COVID-19 tests. But one day (hopefully soon), the consequences of leaving the house with a sore throat won't mean we're risking someone's life. Soon, our physical health will remain a core piece of our well being, but we'll shake the neurosis of a pandemic mindset – hopefully, keeping our newfound sensitivity to public health and a desire to not harm others in the process.
But will our health care system?
"The pandemic accelerated a lot of changes that were kind of percolating in the background," says Matthew Eisenberg, associate professor of health policy and management at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Eisenberg studies how neoclassical economics ("supply and demand") applies to health care. While COVID-19 "catalyzed" many of the changes -- and inequities -- already budding in health care, he said, it will be up to policy makers as well as the supply-and-demand cycle of health care to decide what sticks and what doesn't.
Telemedicine: a thing of the past, or the future?
Video-calls-as-doctor's-visit wasn't a tool created because of COVID-19, but the pandemic has transformed it from an obscure practice to the new way to do health care. Importantly, policy changes made during the pandemic helped knock down some barriers for telemedicine access, and helped providers get paid for it.
Private insurance companies as well as public payers (i.e. Medicare) relaxed their policies on telemedicine reimbursement for health care providers because of COVID-19. As more health care providers get paid for telemedicine (which gives them incentive to provide it), the more supply there is for patients, Eisenberg says.
"Prior to the pandemic, the only way a Medicare provider could be reimbursed for telemedicine would be if a patient was in a rural area where they could not physically travel to a provider," he says. "Even then, they had to go to a specialized facility and do the telemedicine at some out-patient facility's computer."
Even through a computer screen, there are roadblocks to accessing health care. Before COVID-19, some patients, depending on where they live and what medical condition they have, would need to drive across state lines to access a specialist (which requires an amount of time and money many patients don't have). The loosening of interstate licensure laws during the pandemic has allowed people to connect with a doctor miles away, and even fill a prescription across state lines.
Dr. Megan Mahoney is a family medicine doctor and the chief of staff at Stanford Health Care. Stanford Health Care, along with many other providers and organizations, have advocated to keep those restrictions loose once COVID-19 is no longer a public emergency, and the emergency rules no longer apply.
"We have noticed that there are states that don't have a single pediatric endocrinologist," says Mahoney. These specialists treat children with diabetes, for example. "We have a whole team of pediatric endocrinologists."
But in order to participate in telemedicine, you need an internet connection. Mahoney called the bipartisan infrastructure bill, which has a $65 billion budget for expanding internet access to rural communities and helping families pay their internet bill, a "tremendous" help in health care access. In the new virtual health landscape, access to broadband is a "social determinant of health," she says. Some policies and benefits put into place during the pandemic to help families access the internet, like the Emergency Broadband Benefit, were temporary. As broadband continues to mold in its form as a public good, its relationship to health care access will only strengthen.
FS Productions/Getty Images
Sliding into your doctor's DMs
In addition to telemedicine, the pandemic also gave us nearly unlimited access to our doctors' inbox through the patient portal. According to a report published in JAMA, which looked at instant messaging data between patients and their providers from March 2020 through June 2021, the number of patient messages increased, despite fewer patients seeking care in some specialties.
"The sheer demand that we're seeing is very much a testament to the patients' desire for this new channel of care," Mahoney says.
Even older patients, whose relationship with technology sometimes gets a bad rap, are sending their doctors messages and embracing telemedicine, she says.
"That was what propelled and accelerated the transformation," Mahoney says. When elderly people, who were originally reluctant to use telemedicine, were forced to use it in order to get care during the lockdown, "that helped them get over that hurdle."
"What I've noticed is the digital divide, while we do need to be aware of it, it can be overcome and sufficiently addressed through additional education," she says.
Some of that education for patients requires medical assistants to take on tech support roles. In addition to taking blood pressure and temperature when patients come into the room, they also need to make sure patients are comfortable signing into their patient account and feel comfortable with the technology, according to Mahoney.
That shift in the patient-provider dynamic, and more direct access to care, is necessary to maintain a system Mahoney says can help people get early intervention and, hopefully, prevent visits to the emergency room.
Many of the messages Mahoney receives from patients involve correcting misinformation patients have heard about COVID-19 -- the type of preventative, education-based work that the current health care structure "does not support," she says. For example, sustaining a more thorough patient-doctor messaging system would require providers be paid for their time consulting with patients off-hours. It also requires online communication to be in the patient's language – a barrier for many people in the US who don't speak English or speak it as a second language.
"I hope that health care can keep up with this cataclysmic shift that's happening," Mahoney said. "It will have to."
There are arguments against telemedicine as the end-all-be-all. Dr. Thomas Nash, an internist in New York City, told The New Yorker in a June 2020 report that though telemedicine is "doable...I worry that it's going to delay a good exam, and get in the way of deeper interactions between people and their doctors." The informal setting of telehealth may also be less likely to pick up on big issues which routine in-person exams would normally detect, such as high blood pressure, California Healthline reported. And it's more difficult to build an open relationship with your doctor through a screen than it is when you're sitting in their office.
But that also assumes people had a relationship to lose in the first place. As of Feb. 2019, one year before the pandemic began, about one fourth of all adults and half of all adults under 30 didn't have an ongoing relationship with a doctor, according to a report from the Kaiser Family Foundation. This is also a group that shows a strong preference for telehealth, and is the target audience for pre-pandemic care-on-demand services, including Nurx, which allows people to get birth control prescriptions and other medications online, sister sites Hims and Hers, Curology and more.
Sarah Tew/CNET
The great vaccine race
Scientists impressed the world by moving quickly to develop highly effective COVID-19 vaccines in record time – doses of Pfizer and BioNTech's vaccine, with Moderna's authorized right behind it, were available to the first round of eligible adults in the US less than a year after the the country went into lockdown. According to Nature, the fastest anyone developed a vaccine was for mumps in 1960, and that took four years from development to approval (Pfizer's vaccine for people age 16 and up has full approval by the US Food and Drug Administration, while Moderna and Johnson & Johnson have emergency use authorization). While there's much left to be desired about how the vaccines are distributed and accessed by populations in countries outside the US (only 8.9% of people in low-income countries have had a coronavirus shot), an estimate from the Yale School of Public Health reports the vaccines have saved about 279,000 lives and prevented 1.25 million hospitalizations a s of early July 2021.
Part of the reason the vaccines were developed so quickly was because research on the technology they use was already underway (the mRNA vaccines were developed using information from HIV research). While the global society has shown we can be very efficient at producing effective and safe vaccines, don't get your hopes up too high that it'll happen that fast again, says Michael Urban, an occupational therapist and program director at the University of New Haven.
"The thing people have to remember is that the federal government pumped tons and tons of money into this development," says Urban. "Globally, not just the United States."
One reason for that is because COVID-19 had such a prominent impact on our economy. "The fact that this [vaccine] came out is because this is disrupting the fabric of life," Urban says. "How we make money, how we engage with people – how we enjoy our lives."
While it's tempting to hope that because scientists banded together to create a vaccine for COVID-19 and the US government helped fund much of that work it will usher in more resources to find preventative measures and treatments for other diseases, it's unlikely. The incentive for the government to subsidize research and development of treatments for other things that are more individualized, such as cancer or HIV, Urban says, might not be as strong, which leaves it up to the drug companies themselves. And without a public health emergency as transmissible and widespread as COVID-19, it's unlikely drug companies will pour quite as much time and effort into finding treatments.
And when addressing a drug company that profits "billions off of cancer treatments," for example, is it really in the best interest of the company to find an effective preventative measure?
"If they can do one shot and get rid of cancer, is it really in their best interest?" Urban says. "I hate to say that," says Urban.
Two steps forward, two steps back
In addition to propelling us into trends that've been helpful in health care, the pandemic has magnified our shortcomings and has disproportionately affected the same people who have been mistreated by the medical system for years. Black and Hispanic Americans have been hospitalized with COVID-19, and died from the disease, in much greater numbers compared to white Americans.
Dr. Shantanu Nundy, a primary care physician and author of the book Care After Covid: What the Pandemic Revealed Is Broken in Healthcare and How to Reinvent It, told NPR in a May 2021 report that the pandemic scramble to find a testing site, get a vaccine appointment or access preventative care exposed those who might not have ever experienced it to the perils of health care.
"The pandemic magnified long-standing cracks in the foundation of the US healthcare system and exposed those cracks to populations that had never witnessed them before," said Nundy in the NPR interview.
Another weak spot exposed because of COVID-19 was the US public health response, and its subsequent communication to the public about what to do when you're sick. When the pandemic struck, public health agencies were relying on "old methodologies" in terms of quarantine requirements and testing rules for COVID-19, Urban says. Compared to other countries, we have issues with containment and quarantine restrictions that don't always prevent people from spreading the virus, he says. The CDC's latest isolation guidance for people who test positive for COVID-19, for example, has been criticized by some for being too relaxed and not requiring a negative test.
In the US, there's a one-and-done mentality. "You do a one-time test, you're cleared," Urban says. "Have a nice day."
When the next pandemic happens, he says the US is likely still not set up with the structure and tools needed to respond appropriately to a public health emergency. "We didn't learn from the Spanish flu," Urban says.
An early December report from the Global Health Security Index, an assessment of health security across the globe developed by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and the Economist Impact, backs that up. According to the report, 195 countries across the globe are "dangerously underprepared for future epidemic and pandemic threats, including threats potentially more devastating than COVID-19."
But importantly, the blame isn't solely on public health agencies, Urban says. The CDC, for example, is "under pressure" to get people back to work and everyday life, Urban says. To do so, the agency has to work within US federal law and the vastly different state and local laws which govern what we can and can't expect people to do.
Looking forward
As we move away from the immediate threat of COVID-19, our appreciation for mental health care is likely to stay. Eisenberg says that we may see specialized mental health services, including some practices that are virtual-only, and some that are a hybrid of in-office and virtual visits. There may also be a shift away from medication treatments for mental health conditions and more provider-focused psychotherapy, Eisenberg finds.
"It's a small shift, but that could have big implications down the road," he says.
While there are structural and policy changes needed to ensure everyone has autonomy over their health, the pandemic has shifted the way care providers approach health care. Now more than ever, there's an emphasis on public health.
In an interview with the American Medical Association, Nundy explained the framework he believes is necessary to progress health care after the pandemic. Through the course of the pandemic, Nundy said, doctors "built a muscle" for operating with public health in mind.
"Let's take that muscle and let's start applying it to diabetes, let's start applying it to mental health," Nundy said. "So much more is possible."
Correction, Jan. 14: The original version of this story misspelled Shantanu Nundy's last name.
The information contained in this article is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as health or medical advice. Always consult a physician or other qualified health provider regarding any questions you may have about a medical condition or health objectives.
The future of healthcare future healthcare future health biobank what the future of computers will look like what is the future of work what the future holds meaning what the future has in store what the hell what the peeper saw what s the weather
What the Future of Health Looks Like for Apple
What the Future of Health Looks Like for Apple
Apple's Health app keeps evolving, with aspirations to be a complete combination personal data archive, medical liaison and insight engine. But the goals, while ambitious, aren't fully realized yet. iOS 16 and WatchOS 9 are adding medication management and multistage sleep tracking to a growing list of features. But what comes next, and will it start to become a tool that interfaces with doctors even more than it has?
Apple just published a multipage health report (PDF), which aims to detail where the company sees its health focus heading on the iPhone and the Apple Watch. The report covers the app, research studies and initiatives with medical organizations.
As Google prepares to release a Pixel Watch that will connect to Fitbit's features and services, Apple looks to be strengthening its position by expanding beyond the watch to a larger spectrum of health services. Already, Apple Health and Fitness Plus are evolving into services you don't need an Apple Watch to use.
When will Health start to become an extension of how I connect with my own doctors? Will sleep tracking offer a doorway to other health insights? And why doesn't Apple have its own equivalent of the "readiness score" used by Fitbit and Oura?
Apple's vice president of health, Dr. Sumbul Desai, spoke with CNET about the goals of Apple Health and where goals are being set next. She sees the blend of lifestyle with clinical data, medication data and an increasing number of metrics in one place as helping future insights in other health measurements over time.
"You have to do it in a really thoughtful and meaningful way," Desai said. "Because there are also correlations you can make that are incorrect. That's where the work is, making sure that when you make those connections that they are correct, grounded in the science and make sense to the user."
Medication tracking on iOS 16 looks like another step to bring medical histories onto Health.
Apple
Where does Apple Health meet your doctor?
As I've found over the last few months, over several surgeries and doctor visits, my own medical care doesn't often connect with my wearable and phone apps. Apple's been aiming to make strides to connect Apple Health with medical providers, but the framework isn't fully there yet for digital health platforms. A lot of Apple's promised benefits are in identifying long-term data patterns and insights.
"I do think how they interact with each other is really important," said Desai, who points to the new tracking of atrial fibrillation patterns over time in Watch OS 9. "We are actually taking how much time you're in AFib and correlating it to your lifestyle. How much you're sleeping. How much you're moving, you'll see the changes in AFib. If you're using Mindful Minutes, do you see a change."
Apple has tried making data sharing easier with doctors, but right now it still doesn't go far enough. At the medical group where I'm a patient, for instance, there's no obvious way to share the data I'm collecting in Apple Health through the patient portal.
Sleep tracking is gaining sleep stages in WatchOS 9. Will that bring a wave of other health insights down the road?
Apple
Sleep as the next frontier?
Apple's addition of sleep stage-based sleep tracking in the upcoming Watch OS 9 looks to close the gap on other fitness trackers like those from Fitbit, Samsung and Oura. Apple's been pulling new features for the Apple Watch from work in some of the company's ongoing heart research studies, and sleep could end up being a place that evolves next.
"What I'm really excited to learn from a scientific standpoint is, does the amount of sleep that you're getting in certain stages, like core [replenishing sleep], does that actually translate to benefit during the day when you're moving?" Desai said. "Are there certain phenotypes of certain people who have more benefit versus others? There's so much to tackle from a research standpoint there. We would never put anything out until we knew we kind of had some scientific grounding. The whole causation-correlation thing can get very tricky."
Desai suggested future research combining sleep stage data with Apple's ongoing heart and move data from its ongoing study will possibly provide more insights, "but we're still a ways away from that."
Could Apple ever develop its own readiness score?
One thing Apple's evolving and elaborate set of Health insights currently doesn't have is any sort of attempt at a distilled score, or personal health rating. Fitbit, Oura, and a number of other wearables have daily personal scores derived from a variety of individual metrics. I asked Desai whether Apple might pursue a similar idea anytime soon. While it sounds like a direction Apple Health could head in, it also seems like Apple is still trying to lock down the best path to get there.
"It's a really good question. I think the answer is, to be honest, is we don't have a firm POV yet," Desai said. "We want to understand the science behind that, and what can we understand and glean from a scientific standpoint."
Desai suggests that the health measurements, and their meanings, can vary. "HRV [heart rate variability] is a great metric. I'm super fascinated by HRV. But HRV can be changed based on multiple reasons." She suggested that Apple's eventual evolution of its insights will need to come with clear guidance, too.
"I think for us, we want to be able to provide actionable information. So to understand to do that, you actually have to be able to draw it back to, what we think is actually causing that? We are really trying to understand the science behind all of these different metrics and focus on how we provide insights that we know we can back up."
On whether Apple Health could come to other non-Apple devices
Apple's aiming for Health to be a comprehensive, secure system for anyone to use, but it still flows through Apple hardware, which means a portion of the population will always be left out. I asked Desai whether Apple Health might ever be available beyond iPhones.
"We're always looking at ways to support the ecosystem. We just want to make sure we can support that in a private and secure way. That's fundamentally what drives our decision making," Desai said. "We have a ton of things in the App Store ecosystem that are super interesting that people are doing, and we're very supportive of supporting that work.
"Honestly, we make a lot of decisions driven by privacy. And there's a lot of things we choose not to do and choose to do, based upon that."
The information contained in this article is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as health or medical advice. Always consult a physician or other qualified health provider regarding any questions you may have about a medical condition or health objectives.
