Samsung is developing a “health hub” designed to help patients share data with their doctors and stay informed about medical advice between visits.
The company’s plans, reported Monday by Bloomberg and confirmed in a Samsung press release, center on using data collected from its Galaxy devices to create a unified platform for personal health management.
The new features are being released this month through a beta program available to Galaxy Watch users in the U.S. and South Korea.
Not only would the hub enable physicians to access data about patients gathered from their Samsung devices, but it will also provide patients with reminders about health goals to be met between doctor visits.
The hub is expected to integrate with Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy Watch and One UI 8, which introduce new features aimed at improving sleep quality, heart health, fitness, and long-term wellness.
“Patients often find it challenging to track all the advice provided by their healthcare providers and integrate it into their daily routines,” explained Dr. Jeffrey Singer, a senior fellow with the Cato Institute and a practicing surgeon.
“This will serve as a helpful reminder and also facilitate their active participation in their own health care,” he told TechNewsWorld.
Dr. Hon Pak, head of Samsung’s digital health team, told Bloomberg that there is a lot of health and fitness innovation in the market, but it’s often siloed.
“We think there’s a responsibility and a potential for bringing the experience into an ecosystem so that the users have a more simple experience rather than having 10 different apps to manage your condition,” he said.
Personalized and Precise Insights
Samsung recently unveiled several new health features powered by Galaxy AI, designed to encourage better long-term habits. These include Bedtime Guidance for optimal sleep routines, Vascular Load tracking to monitor cardiovascular stress during sleep, a Running Coach that builds personalized training plans based on performance, and an Antioxidant Index to measure carotenoids in the skin for healthy aging.
While there aren’t many details on this hub yet, such a device fits into Samsung’s broader strategy and vision for creating an intelligent health platform, which aims to bridge fragmented healthcare data from multiple sources and create a more unified and deeper understanding of personal health, said Andrew Zignani, a senior research director at ABI Research, a global technology intelligence firm headquartered in Oyster Bay, N.Y.
“By integrating information from different sources such as Galaxy Watches, the intention looks to be to enable more personalized and precise insights that are now backed by medical professionals,” he told TechNewsWorld.
Without more detail, it’s difficult to judge the product, maintained Jitesh Ubrani, research manager of Worldwide Mobile Device Trackers at IDC, a market research company in Framingham, Mass. “It’s just wishful thinking at this point,” he said.
“The best-case scenario is that the hub acts as a central location for everything related to health, including data from devices, prescriptions, doctors’ feedback, historical visits, and more,” he told TechNewsWorld.
“Ultimately,” he added, “this would be used to provide a holistic view of an individual’s health and progress, leading to improved health and a streamlined process between doctors and patients.”
Health Hub and Patient Autonomy
Cato’s Singer noted that the hub can empower patients with the information they need to conduct their own research, allowing them to make more informed decisions about how they wish to manage their health care. “In this respect, it promotes autonomy,” he said.
“Paternalists might fear that by empowering patients with more information, patients may decide not to follow their providers’ recommendations and instead choose a different course,” he added. “However, I don’t see this as a harm. Respecting autonomy means respecting adults’ decisions even when you disagree with them.”
One of the biggest challenges to the hub will be compliance, IDC’s Ubrani said. “Each country has a different healthcare system, and finding a solution that works for all doctors across all countries is extremely difficult,” he explained.
The hub could face other pitfalls, too. “There’s always the possibility of poor algorithms and poor data leading to poor outcomes,” Ubrani observed. “It all depends on how the product is built, but there are numerous possibilities of things that can go wrong or create harm.”
“If, for example, doctors are rated on how well their patients meet their goals, then it creates an incentive for doctors to provide targets that are easy to achieve rather than providing targets that are difficult but necessary for the patients,” he said.
“Will insurance companies start to use this data against patients or doctors?” he added.
Health and Fitness Driving Wearables
Although Samsung is the leader in Android wearables, it still trails Apple in the smartwatch market, and the introduction of the health hub isn’t likely to change that. “Apple just has such a strong lead in smartwatches that certainly this hub, by itself, is not going to change the leadership there,” said Ross Rubin, the principal analyst with Reticle Research, a consumer technology advisory firm, in New York City.
However, he told TechNewsWorld, “The hub could be a way for Samsung to leverage its market dominance in televisions, which Apple doesn’t have a play in, to create stronger ties between devices and, through cross-promotion, create greater interest in its watch.”
Zignani noted that ABI expects strong growth for both wearable and dedicated healthcare devices in the coming years.
“Health and fitness are driving the wearable market forward, with the sector expected to grow in response to post-pandemic healthcare concerns, particularly smartwatches and smart rings, which have become key weapons to track and monitor fitness levels, health-related parameters, and symptoms of chronic diseases,” he said. “This now includes blood pressure monitoring using an inflatable cuff and unique tracking of respiratory issues.”
By 2029, he continued, annual shipments of smartwatches are expected to reach 215 million units, while devices such as smart rings are expected to be the fastest-growing wearable category.
Beyond this, more traditional home-connected healthcare and remote patient monitoring devices, as well as related devices, are also expected to increase considerably over the next few years, comprising a range of devices, including continuous glucose monitors, blood pressure monitors, CPAP machines, pulse oximeters, and emergency response systems, among others.
“We also expect to see growing convergence between the smart home and home healthcare applications in the coming years as part of a more unified smart living strategy from key consumer device manufacturers, much of which was demonstrated at CES earlier this year,” Zignani noted.
“Of course,” he added, “as with any healthcare-related application, regulations, privacy, and data security are vital, and security platforms such as Samsung Knox will likely play a key role within this new health hub, as it is for other Samsung product offerings such as home appliances.”
