U.S. consumers want to take their health into their own hands—literally.
79% of U.S. consumers are willing to use a wearable device to manage their health, and 66% would use a mobile app to manage health-related issues, a recent “Pulse of Online Health” survey finds. Research firm Kelton and health care communications firm Makovsky Health conducted the survey of 1,015 U.S. consumers ages 18 and older in January 2015.
“Smartphones and wearables are driving a major behavioral shift in consumer health and wellness,” says Gil Bashe, executive vice president at Makovsky Health.
On the app front, millennials, consumers ages 18-34, are leading the digital health charge, as they are more than twice as likely to express interest in using a mobile app to manage their health than consumers 66 and older, the survey finds. Top areas of interest for mobile health apps include: tracking diet/nutrition (47%), medication reminders (46%), tracking symptoms (45%), and tracking physical activity (44%).
Among obese and overweight survey respondents, 61% say they would use a mobile app to communicate with a doctor. Overall, 88% of respondents say they would be willing to share their personal information for the sake of improving care and treatment options.
For wearables tracking physical activity ranked first (52%), followed by tracking symptoms (45%), managing a personal health issue or condition (43%), tracking sleep patterns (41%), and tracking diet/nutrition (39%).
Having health information stored on a smartphone or wearable also is beneficial when going to a doctor’s office, where patients need to fill out forms, says Rashid Fehmi, founder and CEO at Travel Health and Wellness LLC, a health care information technology start-up.
“Whenever you see a new physician, you fill out endless paper forms, mostly from memory. What is the likelihood that you remembered each and every thing and did not simply wing it?” Fehmi asks. “Mobile apps allow you to go back to your own documentation.”
Follow mobile business journalist April Dahlquist, associate editor, mobile, at Mobile Strategies 360, @Mobile360April
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