Wearable technology sending reports to insurers and doctors and personalised care based on genetic tests are the future of healthcare, according to Bupa.
Iain McMillan, director of distribution at the insurer, also said he believed technology would be increasingly used to monitor and help people’s mental health.
He was speaking to Association of Medical Insurers and Intermediaries (AMII) chairman Dave Middleton on the trade body’s first Talking Health & Wellbeing podcast.
McMillan (pictured) said it was only a matter of time before wearable technology was being used to monitor people’s health in real time, advancing further on equipment such as that on Apple watches.
“There has been a vision for quite a few years of ongoing monitoring by your wearable which will send reports and possibly even red flags to either your GP or health insurer or both,” he said.
“Which would then spark an outbound call to say something doesn’t look right here can you get yourself to the surgery or hospital as soon as possible. I think it’s just a matter of time before that’s happening.”
It is possible that these technological innovations will also be able to help with mental health, potentially offering preventative advice or early warnings.
Mood monitoring technology
Highlighting a mounting mental health crisis in the country, McMillan added: “Alexa may be useful for mental health because it can be a great reader of people’s moods and flag up potential mental health warnings.”
He noted that in the workplace it may become common for scheme members to be given wearables that will monitor mood and emotional wellbeing.
“I’ve read about things like artificial intelligence and chatbots and mental health apps which would be there for employees to support and help prevent episodes of poor mental health in the future,” he continued.
“I think we’re moving more towards prevention than cure and I think mental health is something where we could do that quite successfully.”
Personalised care
McMillan also emphasised that many see the other major trend in healthcare advances being the use of technology, biology, genomics and precision medicine in the drive towards personalised care.
“I think that will continue the trend towards personalised healthcare, supported by ever increasing use of data – that is the direction of travel,” he said.
He continued: “My interest is what sort of data can we be gathering that would be generated from smartphones, apps etc and how do we use it correctly to really advance this whole subject of personalised healthcare.
“I think we’ll see massive advances. [Personalised healthcare] is going to be a household phrase certainly within our industry in the next few years.
The AMII podcast is available on Apple and Spotify.