Susan Hayes-Cullerton

To discuss this, we're joined now by Stephen O'Rourke, clinical specialist, musculoskeletal, chartered physiotherapist at the Mater University Hospital.

First off, Stephen, are we entering an era of predictive healthcare, do you think, powered by AI?

When you say it's advancing faster than we're aware of, I'm trying to think of an example of that.

Would it be, let's say I run an update on my smartwatch and now it's collecting something that I'm unaware of?

Is that what you mean?

That's a good point, all right, because sometimes we do get alerts saying, oh, your sleep score was lower or the average such and such a thing is out of kilter.

And that isn't necessarily a cause for concern, but it is a point.

It's a point to note that we may not be able to interpret that as we should.

And one thing, though, that is really good about a smartwatch or a smart ring or any of these devices is the fact that if they're worn consistently, you do then get long, continuous, like long duration baselines instead of maybe in a clinical medicine, you're dealing with snapshots.

But is that the way medicine looks at data from these types of wearables?

Or...

Does clinical medicine really take any notice of the data that we're collecting on our smart devices?

But that sounds clinically led.

In other words, the hospital is directing that as opposed to me coming in, presenting with my smartwatch and saying, well, this is what the data says and therefore using that as the basis.

What you're describing with the virtual ward is that's coming from a medical professional in the first place.

Is that orthosomnia?

So you're losing sleep, worrying about the sleep you're not getting.

Is that basically it?

I'm wondering as well about who gets this data because I've seen United Healthcare Medicare Advantage members who use a Fitbit or another activity tracker who can report at least seven and a half thousand steps for 10 days in a month.

They can earn a monthly premium discount of $10 on their insurance program, which means, I'm guessing, that people who are willing to hand over their insurance