What To Watch In Health Care In 2016

As we open the book on 2016, here are a few things to watch for in the field of women’s health and well-being. In no particular order, from the Office of Healthcare Prognostication—a department I just made up—comes these predictions for the new year:

1 • The use of mobile health apps, or so-called “health wearables,” will increase, according to the American College of Sports Medicine’s 10th annual survey on fitness trends. Already, the adoption of smartphone health apps has doubled in the last two years, from 16 percent in 2013 to 32 percent of consumers saying they have at least one health app on their mobile device. 2 • Beyond measuring one’s fitness, health care in general will begin a “shift into the palms of consumers’ hands,” according to PwC’s 2015 Health Research Institute’s annual report. It’s happening already in primary care and the management of some chronic diseases, though programs such as Omada Health’s online program called Prevent are pushing into fields such as behavior modification.