February 29, 2016
University of Washington researchers found doctors lack the tools and capacity to interpret a deluge of fitness, meals and lifestyle data that patients are self-tracking.Nicola, flickr
With apps and activity trackers measuring every step individuals take, every morsel they eat, and each symptom or pain, patients commonly arrive at doctor’s offices armed Along with minutely detailed data they’ve been compiling about themselves.
Yet health care providers lack the capacity or tools to review 5 years of Fitbit logs or instantaneously interpret data from dozens of lifestyle, fitness or meals tracking apps that a patient might have actually on a cell phone, according to Brand-new University of Washington research.
And patients that ask providers to make sense of their self-tracked data or spreadsheets are often disappointed by the reaction — or the lack of one.
In a study that won a finest paper award and will certainly be presented in March at the Association for Computing Machinery’s conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Job and Social Computing in San Francisco, UW researchers surveyed 211 patients and interviewed 21 doctors, dietitians and various other health care providers about their expectations for how patients’ self-tracking data ought to be shared and used.
“We’ve heard doctors say more and more that individuals bring this data in to the clinic and they’re simply overwhelmed by it,” said lead author Christina Chung, a UW doctoral student in Human Centered Design & Engineering.
“Once you’re managing chronic disease or symptoms, day-to-day lifestyle tracking data can easily be useful, yet doctors don’t have actually a method to use these data efficiently and effectively.”
“Once patients start tracking data, they often see every day as a victory or struggle. And individuals want their doctors to engage Along with it at that level, yet that is totally impractical in the quantity of time providers have.” — Sean Munson, UW assistant professor of human centered design & engineering.
The UW group — which includes physicians, computer scientists and engineers — is exploring ways to make self-tracking data more clinically useful and to guidance health care providers and patients collaboratively engage Along with it, including:
- Developing tools to visualize, summarize and annotate self-tracking data
- Designing methods to guidance analyze and explore the data
- Helping clinicians understand which tracking tools can easily finest support different goals
- Encouraging doctors to explain how they want patients to monitor behaviors, and why
- Helping patients verbally explain or integrate article for their providers, quite compared to merely sharing raw data
- Clearly outlining expectations for how the data will certainly be shared and used by both parties
The researchers surveyed patients and providers that manage irritable bowel syndrome or overweight and obese patients — conditions that commonly involve tracking aspects of meals consumption, lifestyle behaviors and symptoms.
Patients use a variety of strategies – including paper diaries, charts and reports — to guidance doctors understand their everyday meals intake and physical activity.University of Washington
Providers that asked patients to keep paper diaries or suggested individual tracking tools often found the resulting article helpful in collaboratively diagnosing triggers or arriving at effective treatments.
That was largely because those providers had designed and refined those processes over time to elicit useful article and monitor the most relevant patient behavior. Providers likewise found it helpful to make notes in the patients’ paper diaries or forms, and then physically review them together. These notes likewise served as a tape of the visit for patients after they left to go home.
Doctors reported being more challenged by data-tracking efforts that patients initiated. An app that a patient found in the Apple store, or wearable activity trackers like Fitbit or Microsoft Band suggested by a friend, may monitor extraneous article or summarize the data in a method that’s not relevant for that health concern.
The ways that some activity trackers or calorie counting apps present data are more suited for supporting healthy and balanced lifestyles compared to helping providers make clinical decisions.Kimberly K., flickr
Co-author Jasmine Zia, an attending physician and acting assistant professor in UW Medicine’s Division of Gastroenterology, said it’s likewise vital that the data be credible, which requires studies or validation that show a provider that they can easily trust the technology’s analysis.
“As a provider you feel pressured because you want to guidance and interpret the data that individuals are bringing you, yet every format is different and none of the data is validated,” Zia said.
“One thing I’d say to app developers is that there really has to be a summary page that’s quick to consider and can easily be interpreted in two to 5 minutes. Right now patients simply print out logs and that doesn’t work,” Zia said.
Patients, however, often become rather immersed in their personal data once they start tracking it, said co-author Sean Munson, assistant professor of human centered design and engineering.
Patients that shared self-tracking data Along with providers wanted their doctors to have actually a finish picture of their everyday life, to guidance them make sense of the data, to use it in Creating personalized treatment plans and to be rewarded for their hard Job in keeping those logs.
“Once patients start tracking data, they often see every day as a victory or struggle. And individuals want their doctors to engage Along with it at that level, yet that is totally impractical in the quantity of time providers have,” Munson said.
But interviewees reported that showing even a little bit of personalization and responsiveness to the data — whether it was looking at reports or listening to a patient interpret exactly what trends he or she believed were vital — could guidance build rapport and convince patients to follow through on the provider’s advice. As one patient put it:
“He (the doctor) simply skimmed through it rather quickly … yet it was helpful in our partnership because I have actually some troubles that were a little different compared to the normal patient. … From that information, he went, ‘Oh, this is a little different, we can easily treat this.’ It made a substantial improvement.”
The research was funded by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services’ Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality; Intel Corp., through its UW-based Science and Technology Focus for Pervasive Computing; and the National Science Foundation.
Co-authors include Kristin Dew, a UW doctoral student in human centered design and engineering; Allison Cole, a UW assistant professor of family medicine; James Fogarty, a UW associate professor of computer science and engineering; and Julie Kientz, a UW associate professor of human centered design and engineering.
For more information, contact Chung at cfchung@uw.edu or Munson at smunson@uw.edu.
Tag(s): College of Engineering • Department for Human Centered Design and Engineering • Sean Munson
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