NY Hospital Launching Remote Patient Monitoring Program Through Apple Watch

A New York hospital is developing a telehealth platform that will enable care providers to manage orthopedic patients at home through the Apple Watch.

The Hospital for Special Surgery (HHS), an affiliate of Weill Cornell Medical College with campuses in New York, Connecticut and New Jersey, is partnering with Indiana-based Zimmer Biomet on the remote patient monitoring platform, which will be introduced early next year.

HHS is integrating its Orthopedic Care Pathways service with Zimmer Biomet’s mymobility with Apple Watch mHealth platform to give care providers an opportunity to track and manage post-discharge care patients at home. The program will allow patients and providers to track activity through the Apple Watch and connect with each other for virtual visits both before and after hospitalization.

In addition, the Orthopedic Care Pathways program can be customized to push personalized information and resources to the patient, ranging from education materials to questionnaires.

The project bridges the gap between clinical programs and consumer-facing digital health tools, giving health systems and hospitals the opportunity to develop programs that make use of popular projects from Apple, Fitbit, Garmin and others. Providers have traditionally been reluctant to embrace consumer-facing technology, saying they don’t always trust the data.

Now they’re finding ways to use those products, either because the technology has become more reliable or they’re focusing on trends rather than specific data points.

"Bringing mymobility with Apple Watch, combined with HSS Orthopedic Care Pathways, to the HSS network, will not only enhance physician and patient communication while allowing patients to recover from home where appropriate, but will also provide our physicians with key mobility metrics and outcomes data collected through Apple Watch and the mymobility patient app to help us further optimize our pre- and post-surgery protocols," Leonard Achan, president of the Innovation Institute at HSS, said in a press release.

The partnership also gives HSS the opportunity to market its care management program to other health systems through Zimmer Biomet.

"Partnering with Zimmer Biomet to deploy our validated protocols and expertise into care pathways on the mymobility with Apple Watch remote care platform advances our commitment to delivering expert, customized patient care and brings HSS' highly-regarded approach to the surgical journey to healthcare systems, clinicians and patients around the world," Achan added.