For all its potential value of lifestyle or preventive medicine, there are several barriers to its widespread integration into care practices. For many practitioners, the primary challenge is a lack of resources—time in particular.

Driven by lower reimbursements, an aging population, rising prevalence of chronic diseases, and expanded access to health insurance and, subsequently, demand for care, patient volumes are surging across many of the specialties that benefit most from preventative care models, including family and internal medicine, neurology, gastroenterology, pulmonology, and endocrinology. Many of these patients are seen just once or twice a year, and the average length of a visit is about 18 minutes. It’s a combination of realities that ratchets up the pressure on physicians who must squeeze as much care management as possible into each patient encounter.

Then there is the issue of ensuring patients have the information and motivation needed to comply with preventive care plans. The increasingly crowded fitness, nutrition, exercise, and wellness app market—there already more than 350,000 health-related apps available worldwide—suggests that many patients are willing to at least try to adopt healthier lifestyles.

But while many of these apps monitor and collect data physicians need for an effective preventive care plan, it is difficult for them to access it in a meaningful way. The same is true of the growing number of connected devices like scales and blood pressure cuffs. The data is there; it’s just not sharable. Nor is there sufficient time to analyze 3-6 months’ worth of data and convert it into a personalized plan of action for the patient within the 18 minutes they’re with their physician.

Those with chronic diseases such as diabetes may see their physicians more frequently, but time is still insufficient to do much more than evaluate key markets like A1c levels or blood pressure readings. And none of this begins to touch on the need for proactive interventions when readings begin to inch beyond healthy or safe levels.

In other words, while most physicians would like to provide holistic care for every patient, it is simply not possible in the current care environment. As is so often the case, however, technology is rising to meet the challenge.

Painting an AI-powered patient portrait
Thanks to advances in mobile technology, artificial intelligence (AI), interoperability, and data exchange, physicians interested in adding aspects or preventive or lifestyle medicine into their care plans can now provide their patients with mobile access to robust and holistic health platforms that bring together wellness plans including daily exercise, meal plans, and stress relief activities. Some solutions go a step further, offering access to live or on-demand exercise or yoga classes, nutrient trackers, and even hydration trackers, all of which enhance patient adoption, satisfaction, and compliance.

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