The Possible Future of Wearables in Health Care
Mobile computing has become a part of everyday life, and wearable technologies are becoming increasingly more useful. One industry where wearable technology could benefit its efficiency and ease is Health care. Health Care technologies today consist of devices that can read certain signatures of disease, test for levels of minerals etc. As well as data collection applications to hold all the information in an organized fashion. What if this was all in one place, one device. I am here to discuss a possible wearable technology that can not only test for any biometrics and vitals, but also a safe and organized place to hold all your information.
Before going into what this wearable would look like, let’s think about what it should do and all the benefits that come with it. Today, wearables can track several things like location, heart rate, calorie burn and so much more. Wearable technology is really changing the way we collect and analyze health related data. A wearable for the health industry would have to be able to do so much more than just heart rate. This possible technology should have the capability of testing blood and analyzing any possible diseases or infections. Also capable of checking insulin levels at any time for diabetes patients. This type of analyzing would help anybody at any time and make sure your body is working correctly and healthy. For personal use, this device should be able to also use Artificial intelligence and machine learning to find patterns in people’s behaviors and show how that might affect their health. For example, how much sleep you get can affect your overall health and brain power. This and so much more would benefit a human’s health and discover so many more patterns that may expose you to unhealthy life choices.
Another aspect of these wearables would be when a patient is in the hospital. Currently we have several separate devices that connect to a person to get an understanding of their vitals. What if this wearable technology would check of their vitals in one spot, and the doctors can access the vitals at any computer in the hospital. These wearables could detect cardiac arrest, or a seizure, and could even detect a rare and severe side effect to prescription. The possibilities are endless and a technology like this would benefit so many people. Even at a normal check-up appointment, the wearable can give the nurse all the information they need instead of using manual equipment, cutting time significantly.
What are the possible drawback of a device like this? The wearable would be cheap, but health care financial institutions would find any way to make it expensive. Obviously, Privacy is a crucial aspect to this kind of technology as you don’t want anyone to access your data except for you and whoever you give permission to, Security would have to be concrete and multi-factor authentication Is a must. Another aspect that would take a lot of time is of how to collect and organize all the data and display it in a modern fashion. You would need a team of researchers, clinicians, software developers, information technologists, and statisticians. Storing, managing, and interpreting the vast data creates new challenges and requires new processes to accomplish this task. A single apple watch worn for three months can obtain up to 6 million kilobytes of data, that needs to be easily stored in any hospitals system. The use of cloud computing is important for holding this data. The only other issue I would consider is the hardware, all the devices that usually need their own plug, would need to be extremely small and battery efficient to make the device worthwhile. These small computers in the wearables would also have to be accurate in getting the necessary data
A device like this would either be a cuff or watch with many miniscule sensors that can work together to find possible concerns in the biometrics or health of the person wearing it. Today, an apple watch can check heart rate, blood oxygen saturation, ECG and much more in such a small space, if this health care device was a little bigger, it could do several additional things to detect. This technology would revolutionize the health care industry and create a space where anyone could be diagnosed or given a check-up in mere minutes. The display would have to be big enough to find any information easily, and the UI should be intuitive enough for any person to surf through your own health data. A device like this should have enough battery support for up to a week, to maintain constant connection between body and device and give you a more accurate reading.
Altogether, this device would be a complete game-changer to the Health care industry, having so many benefits from personal use, to hospital use, this device would give so many the opportunity to be given the health care they deserve. While the drawbacks are time-consuming. A device like this is inevitable and with proper processes and feedback, an all-in-one wearable device like this will come to health care in full force, making competition have to change priorities to cheaper alternatives.
