Orthopedic device companies have responded to payors’ adoption of bundled payments and FDA’s promotion of digital health tools by commercializing products that track patients beyond the O.R. Digital health tools, including wearables, provide device companies with revenue streams that respond to hospitals’ episode of care requirements and patients’ personalized medicine needs, while simultaneously creating a feedback loop for product ideas. Christopher E. Pelt, M.D., a surgeon enrolled in Zimmer Biomet’s mymobility clinical study with the Apple Watch app, offered perspective on the benefits of wearables and shares ways that the technology will impact patients, surgeons and device companies in the future.

2. WEARABLE TECH IN HEALTHCARE
AND ORTHOPAEDICS
CHRISTOPHER E. PELT, M.D.
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR
CHIEF VALUE OFFICER, ORTHOPAEDICS
MEDICAL DIRECTOR ORTHOPAEDIC AND TRAUMA SERVICES
UNIVERSITY OF UTAH DEPARTMENT OF ORTHOPAEDICS
SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH
OMTEC 2019 – Chicago, IL

3. Disclosures
• Zimmer Biomet: Consultant,
Speaker, Research
• Total Joint Orthopedics:
Consultant, Royalties
• Joint Development, LLC: Stocks
• Acelity/KCI: Paid Consultant, Speaker
• AAOS and AAHKS: Committees

4. Points to Address
• Learn why and how surgeons
are using wearable technology
to track patients
• Gain insight into ways that
wearables and digital health
will change the surgeon and
patient experience in the
coming years

5. Wearables in Healthcare
• Growing field and technology

6. Wearables in Healthcare
• Growing field and technology
• Portable health data collection
with medical device
– Holter Monitor (cardiac)
– Capsule Endoscopy (GI)

7. Wearables in Healthcare
• Growing field and technology
• Portable health data collection
with medical device
– Holter Monitor (cardiac)
– Capsule Endoscopy (GI)
• Next Generation medical devices

8. Wearables in Healthcare
• First generation consumer
electronics
– activity monitoring
• (e.g., step count monitors, FitBit ®)

9. Next Generation Wearables
• Advancing Technology
• Advanced Data
– Activity, heart rate, ECG tracings
– Tremendous amount of information
• Non-validated (e.g., ECG not FDA-approved)
• What to do with all the info?
• Worse yet, what to do if miss something
that’s there, but don’t see/use (litigation?)

13. Does it Improve Outcomes?
• Heterogeneous tech, studies, outcomes
• To date, wearables haven’t been shown
to improve outcomes
• But they could

14. Wearables in Orthpaedics
• K-knee
• The ultimate
wearable

16. Wearables In Orthopaedics

19. What are we interested in?

20. Rehab
• Current Rehab/Therapy relies on
in-person visits, manual therapies,
machines
– Time consuming
– Intermittent
– Costly (time off, transportation,
cost of therapy and co-pays)
• Biofeedback?

21. Biofeedback

22. Move to Wearables?
• Wear in own shoes
• Constant use available
• Realtime feedback
• Cost potentially offset
if can replace other
current expenses (PT?)

23. Relook at Consumer Market

25. Summary of Current Wearables
in Orthopaedics
• Scattered landscape,
piecemeal technologies
• Most focus on steps/stairs,
activity, ROM, and maybe force

26. The Future
• Collect meaningful and actionable data
• Realtime feedback
• Integrate into EMR (not a
duplicate/separate system)
• Artificial Intelligence (avoid
reliance on manual review)
– Data Analytics
– Risk Stratification
– Patient Optimization
– Risk/Concern identification/Avoidance

27. The Future
• Integrate the currently broken
technology landscape
• Replace low value interventions with
technologies that may reduce costs
and improve outcomes

30. Introducing Technology
in Healthcare
• Must solve a problem
• Cannot be additive in time or cost,
unnecessary, burdensome or un-useful
• Lots of gadgets already