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A majority of Americans want to monitor their health with connected devices (56 percent), with most Americans concerned about their weight while less than half are concerned with their blood pressure, according to an online study of 2,024 U.S. adults conducted by Harris Poll and sponsored by A&D Medical, a specialist in connected health and biometric measurement devices.
Nearly half of Americans (48 percent) said they are concerned about their blood pressure, with one in four Americans (25 percent) concerned about either having a stroke or developing hypertension, and more than one in five Americans (23 percent) are worried about heart attacks.
A majority of Americans (66 percent) revealed they are concerned about their weight, with men between the ages of 55 to 64 the most concerned demographic with 74 percent concerned, followed by women 18-34 with 73 percent concerned.
When it comes to weight, American were most concerned with being overweight (48 percent), being at risk for diabetes (26 percent) and being considered unattractive (19 percent).
The survey also found a majority of Americans (53 percent) would want connected health devices and apps to come from a company with health care experience for a variety of reasons.
More than a quarter (26 percent) said it was because medical expertise is important to them, while 25 percent said they want to know they can trust the company making the device or app and 18 percent said companies with medical experience will know what information will be trusted by their doctors or important to their doctors.
“The most surprising finding was the fact that so many people are interested in heavy duty health monitoring – not just the lighter fitness tracking. The fact that more than half want self-monitoring that goes direct to their doctors is quite astounding,” Terry Duesterhoeft, president and CEO of A&D Medical, told eWeek. “And that the one function people want monitored is blood pressure, beating out weight. This tells us that Americans are getting very serious about using technology to stay not just fit but healthy in a true medical sense.”
One in every two Americans say they want at home health measurement devices to automatically connect online to send information to their doctor and other people they choose.
Survey respondents cited several reasons they would want connected health, such as allowing them to keep track of their health information accurately (30 percent), allow them and their doctor to see trends and patterns (29 percent) and giving the user peace of mind to know their health status (24 percent).
The most popular vital sign Americans wanted monitored was blood pressure, with 37 percent of Americans wanting to monitor that with connected devices followed by weight (33 percent) chronic conditions like diabetes (25 percent) and sleep (23 percent).
“The lighter fitness oriented applications will continue to expand – but consumers are ready to take this up several notches to true medical grade health monitoring. It’s all part of consumers taking a larger role in their health,” Duesterhoef said. “There is a lot of exciting activity in wearables that monitor a wide range of biometrics that will be important for general wellness, as well as chronic disease management. Also, going forward deep analytics of the biometric data will advance to provide more meaningful insight into an individual’s health.”