Wearable technology in health care

From measuring steps-per-day to serious illness prevention, new technology developments in wearable sensors are used everyday by millions to monitor their health. The monitoring devices come in small enough forms to be worn on the wrist or in direct contact with the skin with “smart patches”. These patches are medical grade wearables, primarily prescribed by doctors.

Smart Wearables are getting smarter about health

Helping people in their fitness journeys and keeping track of sleep or stress, are some of the most common uses since their emergence.

However, lately there has been a shift towards health monitoring. New advancements in hardware and software now provide apps that can measure heart rate and even detect the possibility of a stroke.

During the pandemic, new features of smartwatches emerged that could measure blood oxygen saturation. These new devices quickly spread since they could alert people in case of low oxygen levels, an extremely useful tool in possible Covid-19 detection.

Companies are now even trying to monitor blood pressure with sensor technologies and Artificial Intelligence. In this case, smartwatches are not as efficient because they do not offer the immediate contact with a person’s skin that smart patches do.

Smart patches are so small and discreet, attaching right onto the skin. Some of them even go into the skin painlessly, with the use of microscopic needles. These function as biosensors or even as means of medication delivery.

Data concerns

Data from wearables can be sent directly to doctors to be included on a patient’s health record, thus contributing to diagnostics and medical care.

Nevertheless, smart wearables have been met with scepticism:

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• Their data accuracy is being doubted by some doctors, calling for false positive or negative results which may put patients into further stress and tests.

• Data privacy concerns 60% of wearable users for medical purposes, regarding the collection of privacy data (Deloitte survey). Covid-19 made everyone give their consent more freely. What happens if that data falls into the wrong hands?

• Cybersecurity risks could be life threatening. If smartwatches get hacked, they might send out false alerts, prompting for medication overdose. Also, smart patches that infuse medications into the human body are at great risk of getting hacked and leaving patients vulnerable. Therefore, companies must build on cybersecurity and safeguard key processes of product and software development, supply chains, as well as cloud computing.

Despite these concerns, the industry is rapidly growing with more technological innovations.