This effort and view of the patient is actually the most innovative program we have. For the first time we are now able to objectively capture a much wider range of lifestyle variables than could ever be captured in face-to-face visits.

This is now being accomplished while at the same time eliminating almost all data entry by either the patient or the physician. Capturing data from wearables, and several Bluetooth enabled scales, blood pressure cuffs, thermometers and now even beds where the same equipment that is used by our sleep lab is offered as options for most modern beds enables us to get a much more complete and richer view of the patient that is used in both telehealth and face-to-face visits.

In fact, this feature is what drove us to using only Bluetooth enabled blood pressure cuffs and as part of the training are helping the patients pair their new cuffs with their phones. This eliminates the need to return handwritten logs to the clinic.

Having this data available on demand and in the control of the patient begins to flip the script where traditional medicine is physician/provider driven.

We are now seeing how it’s possible to have patient-centered and patient-driven encounters.

Apple’s Health app is only the first to make this available to physicians in the physicians EHR.

Google Fit is the other major vendor that is working with EHR vendors to enable a provider view to what the patient is tracking.

It is not lost on us that over the next few years many measurements and tests that are now restricted to the office setting will be performed where the patient lives and works.

A number of us are actually starting to see how the majority of our office visits will actually return to the home and enable us to be much more proactive and actually start to improve the health of our patients.