digital health

So you read a headline and say, what, what?? But of course we regularly find ourselves incredulous.  Can that headline be accurate? What did that study say? Who did they survey to get that result?  This has been a particularly bad week for distortion headlines – and not about politics, actually.  These are about topics seniors and families would care about and be disappointed when they read more.  Let’s start with the Wall Street Journal article title:

Firestorm from the American Medical Association.  A few weeks ago, the CEO of the AMA, Dr. James Madara, said what few others will say: "…the explosion of direct-to-consumer digital health products, to apps of mixed quality – it’s the digital snake oil of the early 21st century."  And if that weren’t enough, he compared the technology innovations today (including "ineffective" EHRs) as analogous to the challenges confronting 'quackery' when the AMA was founded in 1847.  Then came the chorus of rebuttals from health IT folk and the Boston Brahmins of digital health, including Dr. Joseph Kvedar ("telemedicine is unstoppable") and Dr. John Halamka ("no snake oil to see here!").  But adults are downloading health apps – in one study, at least half of the surveyed population had downloaded at least one.  Using, not so much.