The Rise of the Quantified Patient

The last few years have seen tremendous progress being made in empowering individuals to take more control over their health. A range of wearable devices and mobile apps have given us the ability to monitor and track a wide range of health metrics and has given people with chronic conditions such as diabetes newfound support.

While such advances are undoubtedly powerful, they have largely operated in isolation, with difficulties existing when we try and aggregate data from various services into one, easy to manage place.

One company that is hoping to improve matters is Tictrac, whose Health Lab product not only helps you measure your health using various devices but pools that data together toward a number of defined health outcomes, with support given along the way to make sure you stay on track.

The aim of the product is to fundamentally change how we look after our health. They believe that by giving us the information we need, we can make better and more informed choices about our lives. Rather than dumping raw data from our various apps and devices, however, the platform turns that raw data into actionable insights.

This is crucial, as previous studies have suggested that doctors are ill-equipped to deal with us dumping a load of lifestyle data on them.

“We’ve heard doctors say more and more that people bring this data into the clinic and they’re just overwhelmed by it. When you’re managing chronic disease or symptoms, day-to-day lifestyle tracking data can be useful, but doctors don’t have a way to use these data efficiently and effectively,” the authors say.

As such, if we are to successfully deal with the growing amount of patient-generated data, the key will be to use technology to derive insights from it rather than rely on doctors to do so for us.

Route to Market

The company has been primarily working with private companies that are looking to boost the health and wellbeing of their workforce, with a good example being the recent partnership they agreed with global reinsurer Munich Re. The partnership builds upon similar agreements with companies such as SoftLogic Life.

The hope is that the platform will boost insurer engagement with customers as well as helping people to live healthier lives.

“Through having a fuller understanding of their policyholders’ behavior, insurers can use that data to enhance the detection and prevention of health risk factors and achieve their business objectives while improving the wellbeing of their customers. We’re extremely proud of our partnership with Munich Re and excited to be rolling Wellgage out across the world,”  TicTrac said.

Munich Re hopes to really change how they engage with customers via the Wellgage platform to help people make personalized lifestyle changes more effectively.

“The creation of Wellgage was driven by the significant change of environment insurers are doing business in. With the rapid rise in consumer adoption of technology, the industry is facing difficulties in shifting to accommodate customer expectations on service delivery and interaction,” they say.