Addressing Time, Tools, Training, Technology and Trust in Healthcare Integration [Podcast Series]
[:54] Dr. Bantham introduces her guest, Grace McNamara
Grace McNamara is CEO of Exercise Intelligence.
She is also Co-Founder of RISE - Females in Fitness Collective.
[1:07] Exercise Intelligence definition
“So we pull together all of that science, that exercise science, and then we layer in as many of behavioral methodologies and supports as we can. Because at the end of the day, the science is great and we have it, but unless it's implemented, it's useless, right? So it's all about how do we get people to incentivize people to actually move and be physically active and share that with their health and health support structures?”
[7:28] Exercise Intelligence platform
“But we’ve got to go back to that personalization. I think what's important then is the way we build a platform is that's the science behind us. There's a data portal that your professional can see. And then there's the app that is fairly simple for that end user and that member of what do I need to do today? What do I need to do this week? Right. So it's, and again, it goes back to the global standards that we have, ideally getting people up to 150 minutes of moderate activity a week, but we start off really slow. So we start off in maybe 10 minutes, low intensity three days a week, it might just be there. And it builds up gradually over time to get you to that 150 and then hopefully maintain you at 150.”
[14:16] Addressing trust in healthcare integration
“Trust, first of all I’ll address because it sounds the most important, right? And I think we've had this for decades as we've said before, clinicians necessarily don't trust fitness professionals because there isn’t the same level of standards, there isn't the same level of verification of who's qualified and what's safe, and so on. So for one thing is, we've gone down the regulated route, like any other technology in the healthcare and the medical world, the same way.”
[21:57] Fitness professionals using the platform
“So again, hopefully adding trust and credibility for that end user who may or may not know what exercise has, is going to do for them and may or may not also trust the fitness and industry sector. So it's trying to build a trust in all angles, right, with healthcare professionals, with the fitness professional and with the person who's going to be the one accessing the support and being more physically active.”
[25:40] Closing the feedback loop with technology
“So with consent, all that data is centralized into one place and then we can send that, share it back to that to that professional, seamlessly. So, and that's really important. If we're going to ask somebody to be physically active and we're going to reward them for being physically active, we need something that's going to track all day activity and wearables do that. So we have the technology.”
[28:05] Window of opportunity for healthcare integration
“I think it's the urgency. I don't think there's any country or system in the world who doesn't feel the urgency of we've got to do something quick. All our trends are still going in the wrong direction. So I think it's the urgency, I think we have the digital transformation words been pushed around for years. And we're not necessarily seeing the ROI in some spaces. And the urgency is now. We don't have the opportunity to look at another 10 years of incremental changes, we have an urgency that we have to see exponential change now.”
