Many wearables like fitness trackers and smartwatches come with a variety of features to monitor your health, from heart rate to sleep patterns. These devices can be used for physical training, to detect irregular heart rhythms or even to alert people when they’re about to have a seizure.
These technologies can help save lives by detecting and treating serious conditions, such as atrial fibrillation, which can cause blood clots that could lead to strokes. But can they do more?
Detecting Diseases in Their Early Stages
Smartwatches and other wearable sensors provide continuous, personalized data that makes clinical-grade health screening and monitoring possible. Companies like LifeQ are leveraging watch brands to deliver apps that detect as many as 40 sleep and cardiovascular disorders, including atrial fibrillation, which accounts for a quarter of strokes in the United Kingdom each year.
Devices that monitor heart rate and blood pressure are common, but wearables are evolving to measure hydration levels (electronic skin patches), respiratory rates (wearables with cameras in the chest area), blood oxygen levels (smart rings and wristbands), concentrations of ions or metabolites (smart clothes and textiles), or intraocular and inter-scleral pressures (eyeglasses and smart contact lenses).
The data generated by these devices can help physicians see their patients as individuals rather than clones of the theoretical, average patient. For example, algorithms can turn reams of data into bespoke fitness regimens for losing weight or controlling diabetes that are more effective and easier to follow than one-size-fits-all regimes.
Detecting Major Health Events
When it comes to detecting major health events, wearables can help by providing data that can be easily shared with healthcare providers. This information can be analyzed to identify imbalances and trigger interventions before they become life-threatening.
For example, Empatica’s wearable can detect abnormal body temperature changes and track movements to monitor for seizure activity. This allows it to alert the wearer and caregiver when a patient has an epileptic seizure, which is critical for people with seizures or a family history of them.
However, some of these devices still have issues with accuracy. Pantelopoulos and Bourbakis found that most wrist-worn devices have high accuracy in laboratory tests, but lower accuracy when estimating energy expenditure and during real-world activities. Better battery and sensor technology could improve this.
Detecting Preventable Diseases
Wearable devices have the potential to dramatically change our current healthcare landscape, if they are correctly utilized. However, despite their widespread adoption, the majority of devices are currently not medically validated and are being used as consumer fitness trackers. Unsubstantiated claims (no reference to peer-reviewed studies) often accompany these products, which set a dangerous precedent for incorporating inaccurate data into medical decision making. False negatives can allow potentially life-threatening conditions to be overlooked, while false positives can lead to overtreatment and anxiety.
Many technologies and improvements have the potential to greatly increase the utility of wearable devices in healthcare, including better sensor accuracy, improved battery life/energy scavenging and on-body hardware size, multiplexing of sensing modalities, and flexible form factors. In addition, epidermal electronics have the potential to monitor physiology and biochemical processes on the skin surface without need for external devices. These include smart jackets that utilize Google’s Project Jacquard technology and clothing such as shirts, dresses or socks that have built-in sensors.
Increasing Lifespan
Wearables are used in workplaces to track the physical activities of workers and provide insights. They also help in detecting and managing psychological disorders like depression. Moreover, they can help improve workplace safety and productivity by helping employees focus on their job and prevent them from distractions and hazards.
Some studies have shown that wearing fitness tracking devices increases the frequency of exercise. This can significantly increase the lifespan of a person. However, these devices are not ideal for all people. Many people may not have the motivation to wear these devices, unless they are pushed by their healthcare providers or employers. Moreover, the accuracy of these devices is not always guaranteed. This is the reason why physicians should only recommend them to their patients who will actually benefit from them. Moreover, they should monitor the results of these devices to ensure their effectiveness over time. Then, they can make necessary adjustments. Moreover, they should also be linked to medical records to get granular data on how physical activity changes over the course of different chronic disease trajectory phases.
OnePhenix is the only IPAAS software that connects your wearable data to your healthcare professionals. www.Onephenix.com.au