Becker's Hospital Review

84 CIO / HEALTH IT Is Amazon's Halo good or bad for healthcare? 5 observations By Laura Dyrda A mazon launched a health-tracking device, Halo, on Aug. 27, the company's first foray into the wearables market with EHR vendor Cerner. Halo integrates with Cerner's products, allowing users to share their health data directly into the EHR. Sharp HealthCare in San Diego is the first health system to use the technology, which includes advanced sen- sors to connect data, including the user's temperature, heart rate and sleep and fitness information. e wearable also has two microphones that us- ers can turn on and off to analyze energy and positivity in their voices. e move puts Amazon in direct competition with Apple and Fitbit, which Google's parent company entered into an agreement to acquire for $2.1 billion in November 2019. According to Grand View Research, the global wearable technology market was valued at $32.6 billion in 2019 and is expected to grow at a 15.9 percent compound annual growth rate through 2027. e pandemic will likely lead to more people using wearables, according to the report, and some companies are eager to develop wearables that identify warning signs of virus symptoms. Some in the industry see the move as disruptive, while others don't see it as anything new. "Amazon launching the Halo health tracker could be a giant leap by Amazon, in not only the healthcare sector, but also for Amazon it- self, courtesy its interconnected flywheels business model. Amazon's Health Tracker will considerably impact the remote healthcare ser- vices industry," said Jitin Narang, chief marketing officer for TechA- head, a mobile app development company. "rough integration with Cerner EHR, the data collected by the app could be shared with the doctors, and appropriate remote consultation can be provided to the patients without the requirement to visit the hospitals." While Mark Weisman, MD, CMIO of Peninsula Regional Health Sys- tem in Salisbury, Md., agrees that the EHR integration is a good fea- ture for Halo, he is less enthusiastic about the technology. "I think this is an incremental advance in wearable sensors, but not a revolutionary breakthrough product," he said. "Body fat analysis and mood identification in a wearable are new and intriguing, but as a pri- mary care provider, I cannot say that either data point is something I was looking for from my patients. In my 20 years in internal medicine, I have never said that I would improve health if I only had a daily body fat analysis." Here are five observations about the technology: 1. e wearable will boost remote patient monitoring capabilities for both mental and physical health. Halo tracks exercise, medicine schedules and sleep patterns to give clinicians an idea of the user's daily routines. e tone function enables mental health monitoring by analyzing the user's voice during stressful times and can give psychia- trists a more detailed analysis of their patients' emotions daily. "e Halo has unique features that haven't been seen elsewhere, like emotional state reflected in the voice, to address stress as well as phys- ical conditions," said eresa Hush, CEO of Roji Health Intelligence, a healthcare technology and data company. "With the additional he of data valuable to patients' physicians, con- sumer wearables could help physicians and patients work together to diagnose and improve health," said Ms. Hush. "In a pandemic where telehealth has grown to be a primary medium for patient visits with their physicians, that would be the real game changer." But will clinicians find value in the data or will it be more valuable to self-motivated users? "For individual use, I personally think it's a fun toy, and I would be interested in trying it out," said Dr. Weisman. "As a CMIO, my overall impression is that I am underwhelmed. It is not a device that is going to significantly advance medicine and is more likely to be collecting dust in the nightstand drawer aer six months." 2. Halo integrates with Cerner's EHR as well as Amazon Echo to give more real-time updates. e Echo device can give users a reminder to take specific medications at a particular time. Halo also automatically orders medications for delivery when they are low. e data integration can help healthcare providers improve workflows as well. "When data is collected efficiently and feeds into the EMR, the care team benefits from reduced administrative burden and a broader base of information on which to base their decisions," said Stefan Behrens, co-founder and CEO of Gyant, an artificial intelligence healthcare startup. "It's great to see Cerner playing an active role to support this movement and expand the breadth of its platform." Dr. Weisman said the integration will be a good feature if it can be ac- companied by artificial intelligence that summarizes data and presents it to the clinician in a meaningful way. It's unclear whether Amazon performs that function, or if the EHR must synthesize the data. "If it's just a steady stream of raw data that is being thrown at me, then it does more damage than good," he said. 3. User data security and privacy are a potential red flag for Halo. "e customers should have a clear say on what data they want to be collected by Amazon, and they must have the right to access and de- lete the collected data if they want to do so," said Mr. Narang. e technology will only be good for healthcare if the companies deliver on their security promises, said Reuben Yonatan, founder and CEO of GetVoIP, a cloud communications adviser. Amazon reported that the data is encrypted, and users can delete data and voice samples at will. "If the security proves to be as comprehensive as stated, it will open the healthcare industry to similar tech in the future, which will further improve the industry," Mr. Yonatan said. 4. e pandemic accelerated trends toward virtual care, remote mon- itoring and consumerism in healthcare. Patients are relying more on digital interactions with healthcare providers and expect a personal- ized experience. "I'm really happy to see a third horse in the wearable race with Amazon's latest announcement, alongside Apple and Fitbit," said Chris Fernan- dez, CEO of EnsoData, an artificial intelligence company focused on

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