Samsung Plans ‘Health Hub’ To Connect Doctors With Patient Data

Currently, Samsung is developing a so-called health hub that can enable patients to share their data with care facilities and help them make informed decisions throughout the time between medical visits. The project, covered by Bloomberg on Monday and so far corroborated by a Samsung press release, aims at combining data produced on Galaxy devices into a single system of personal health management.

This new functionality is already released in a beta program along with U.S. and South Korean users starting this month via the Galaxy Watch. Theoretically, the platform will allow clinicians to gain access to data sets that are aggregated using devices that come with the Samsung brand and will, at the same time, remind patients about the relevant reminders concerning health goals set during previous visits. Whereas the new app is expected to be built into the new Galaxy Watch and One UI 8 platform releases (the former providing respective improvements in sleep tracking, cardiovascular evaluation, exercise-related workflows, and longitudinal wellness profiling), the current capabilities are associated with Bedtime Guidance, Vascular Load monitoring, a Running Coach, and an Antioxidant Index that can track the skin carotenoid levels and, thus, promote healthier aging. An observant Dr. Jeffrey Singer (a senior fellow of the Cato Institute as well as a practicing surgeon) has noticed that patients often find it hard to adhere strictly to the recommendations of the clinician in a comprehensive way. It will be a useful reminder and will enable them also to become their own health care managers, he explained to TechNewsWorld. According to Dr. Hon Pak, head of Samsung digital health team, despite the presence of a strong landscape of health and fitness innovation, the solutions are usually working in different silos. According to Andrew Zignani, ABI Research Senior research director, the proposed hub is categorically in line with the general strategic approach taken by Samsung to create an intelligent health platform that can aggregate fragmented data provided by different sources and, as a result, provide more coherent and specific information that is tied to evidence-based medical supervision. Initial details of the next system are sketchy; Jitesh Ubrani of IDC, therefore warned that it would be sensible to consider the offering as being still in conceptual form. The optimum would be the hub that is equivalent to at the center of everything that is associated with health including the device data, drug prescriptions, physician responses, past visits among others, he opined to TechNewsWorld. In the end, he said, this would give an all-inclusive picture of the health of an individual enabling an enhanced health and a smooth process between physicians and patients.