— Reflections on the Hottest Trends at the EBN Conference, Part 2 —
By Jack Rose, Vice President of Sales, BioIQ —
Wearables have a promising future for tracking everything from exercise habits to sleep patterns and nutritional intake. But you can’t improve what you can’t measure. Where wellness programs are concerned, the starting point involves identifying candidates whose year-over-year biometrics indicate a “need to move.” With clinically verifiable data as a baseline, these individuals can be funneled into proven interventions—with wearables, games, and health apps as important components.
As a wellness administrator, your goal shouldn’t just be to distribute devices and apps, but to bend the cost curve for the population as a whole. For example, if 30 percent of your employees currently use wearables, and you would like to boost that number to 60 percent, BioIQ can help you identify high-risk candidates, track signups, and set up incentive programs to get people involved and keep them engaged.
Wearables are exciting but as trends change and fads emerge stay focused on the essential components of your wellness program. All wellness activities should be anchored by biometric screening programs and health risk assessments to accurately measure population health. Make sure that your data is secure, and utilize a proven data hub to integrate health data into a versatile, HIPAA-compliance wellness portal.
Here are a few quotes that illustrate the “hope and hype” of these exciting new tools:
