The Future of Wearables
Wearables have come a long way in a short time. The first products on the market focused on fitness culture and the value these devices could provide for fitness enthusiasts who wanted to fine-tune their workouts. By tracking steps, heart rate, and sleep activity consumers could understand their fitness approach better and nudge themselves toward healthier living.
But more recently, companies have begun to explore the myriad of ways wearables could provide legitimate medical value to health care providers and their patients. How will wearables evolve as products to augment current health care and chronic disease management? The possibilities for wearables to affect chronic illness management, disease prevention, and diagnosis are limitless.
Track vital sign patterns
Heart rate is the most obvious vital sign to track — it’s not too tricky to monitor a person’s pulse on the wrist. And while tracking heart rate was originally intended to make wearables a great fitness tool for optimizing exercise, the devices have been saving lives.
In 2017, a 73-year-old woman credited Fitbit for saving her life after she noticed her heart rate was climbing and called 9–1–1. Doctors discovered blood clots in her lung arteries. Similar life-saving stories have appeared about a 17-year-old athlete, a 34-year-old Australian mom, ad a 42-year-old man in New Jersey. These stories have become almost common. In just a few years since their first generations, wearables have already provided value beyond expectations.
It’s easy to underestimate the power of tracking simple vital signs like heart rate, but the heart can actually provide a wide variety of data. For instance, one Apple Watch app claims it can detect multiple health issues like atrial fibrillation, hypertension, sleep apnea, and even diabetes. It manages this with better data science and pattern recognition.
Address a variety of health issues
The wearable market also has plenty of room to expand its targeted customer — fitness enthusiasts aren’t the only consumer base that can make use of this kind of technology. For instance, Foci is a device that monitors breathing rate and uses biofeedback to reduce stress and encourage better focus. Biofeedback is a practice of electrically monitoring heart rate, respiratory rate, or other vital sign as a way of learning to manage stress.
Battling anxiety and stress is a whole new area of health monitoring that few brands have ventured into. But given the popularity of mindfulness apps, it seems obvious that mindfulness wearables are the next obvious step.
A new wearable created by a startup (Neopenda) makes a vital-signs monitor for newborns specifically designed for healthcare facilities in developing countries. Because these countries are too often understaffed, wearables could serve as a way to manage some of the workload. Neopenda’s infant bracelet can track heart rate and temperature as well as blood oxygen saturation level.
Monitor new signs and symptoms
As wearables get more popular and companies invest in new technology, the scope of what these devices can track will expand.
There’s already a device that can track cortisol within sweat. Cortisol is a notoriously difficult hormone to accurately test. It currently requires repeated blood draws over a period of days, but if this wearable can effectively release a device that can track cortisol in sweat, that will drastically change the way cortisol is monitored.
The proliferation of small hardware has also helped expand possibilities for the future of wearables. L’Oreal is investing in a tiny UV sensor wearable that can fit on a fingernail. The company says the device would monitor UV rays to reduce dangerous levels of sun exposure.
All signs say we’re just getting started with wearables. There are many different ways they could change diagnosis, prevention, and illness management in the future. As health care providers and designers collaborate more, data can provide wearables better pattern recognition and new possibilities for diagnosis. Wearables will also go beyond the all-too-common fitness watch and expand into skin patches, tags, clips, and other kinds of hardware. And finally, the different kinds of sensors available will most likely expand to track a multitude of factors.
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