Digital health Coach concept gaining traction
Really interesting piece by Dr Eric Topol in the New York Times* last weekend, delving into the potential for data to change the way that dietary advice is given and received, from one size fits all to individual and real-time.
This is also a prediction in Beyond the Fog; and Dr Topol examines it in depth. As we did, he posits that a Virtual Health Coach (we called it a Digital Health Coach and have described its possible role in some detail in the report) could learn about your individual health metrics and provide you with customised dietary recommendations.
Of course, this is only one part of the role of a digital health coach when viewed at a system level — and only one aspect of the data available at an individual level (the piece is hooked around an analysis of Dr Topol’s own gut microbiome); but the description of how this might come about (and is already on its way) is helpful.
One of the key predictions in Beyond the Fog is that the availability of huge amounts of real time data about our bodies will lead to a widening of the definition of healthcare to include aspects such as diet, exercise emotional and physical wellbeing and social and environmental factors.
The coach would need to be able to provide recommendations in all of these areas — and in a personalised way. This has big implications for what mean by ‘healthcare’ — and we go further in Beyond the Fog to suggest that in technology enabled system focused on prevention of illness, dietary, exercise and wellbeing support will become an integral part of primary healthcare, with human coaching skills being at the core of primary healthcare.
In the report, we show how the Digital Health Coach fits within a new healthcare construct, where an integrated system wraps itself around the individual, providing personalised advice according to the needs, environmental context and expressed goals of the individual.
Crucially, though, this is not about the AI coach or the algorithm replacing the healthcare professional: the Digital Health Coach in effect becomes the always-on link between the healthcare professionals and the individual, offering the best available advice exactly when it’s most effective and helping spot when human intervention is needed.
For us, the next interesting question that this raises is: what will the new primary healthcare professional/clinic need to look like to deliver on the potential of this new opportunity?
