Connected Health: Marcus Welby is 'dead,' new solutions needed

BOSTON—Technology and aging should go together and result in great things, said Joseph Coughlin, PhD, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology AgeLab. Coughlin spoke at the ninth annual Connected Health Symposium on Oct. 25.

New solutions bring new challenges, he said. For example, distribution refers to how to get people interested in new healthcare technologies. The prevailing school of thought has been to give patients enough facts and fear to motivate them. Coughlin said perhaps fun, friends and fashion would be a better path to engagement. “Think about how engagement has been done successfully elsewhere. Apple, for example, has made engagement fun. You have to add a little sugar to the discussions that people don’t really want to have.”

Service delivery is another consideration, Coughlin said. Rather than viewing the process as selling a commodity, think about moving a solution.

More data often are considered a good thing but “sometimes more is just more,” Coughlin said. He cited a survey that found that one-quarter of families are providing at least 20 hours of care a week for an older adult. That is on top of parenting responsibilities, running the household and other tasks. Providers must remember that “in the daily business of life, everything else is important too.”

The advances in technologies to assist with the care of older adults raise new concerns. For example, tools to monitor the wandering or medications of older adults could lead to “safety homeostasis,” or, “I can be less engaged since the sensors are on.” Another challenge is that these new tools take a frail, unhealthy population and tries to make them early adopters. Healthier people haven’t even tried many of these newer tools, Coughlin said. Moving forward, the idea that “the key to good health is a strong advocate” will be truer than ever.

The patient-centered medical home is a great idea, Coughlin said. “We’re resurrecting Marcus Welby, MD.” The problem is that “Marcus is dead.” Coughlin asked his audience if they are willing to take in that much more data. Connected health is going to produce an incredible amount of data. “The average doctor is 53 years old. I’m not sure an additional burden is going to be welcome.” He said we need to rethink the medical home and new generation of professionals that will need to distill all of the data into meaningful information. “We need to resocialize the profession. Until we can call telemedicine medicine, we have not made it yet. Until we can make science into the new normal and not the new innovation, we’re going to have challenges ahead of us.”

The pressure is on, Coughlin said, pointing out that a Baby Boomer turns 66 every seven seconds.