Unexpected Health Impacts of Wearable Tech
Healthcare wearables go beyond basic fitness trackers to offer disease-specific functionalities. They can collect data, sync it with applications and transmit it to clinicians’ devices for analysis.
For example, a woman experiencing gallbladder attacks might experience sudden changes in her blood pressure and heart rate. A tracker would pick up these fluctuations and inform doctors, preventing needless deaths.
False positive results
As technology advances, wearables like smart watches, fitness trackers and even the latest augmented reality devices are transforming our everyday lives. Wearables also collect millions of data points that range from the number of steps you take to your heart rate.
For example, a wearable biosensor can measure blood pressure on the go without a cuff. This is an important feature for individuals with hypertension, as high blood pressure is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality globally.
Additionally, outfitting workers with sensors in manufacturing plants and warehouses can help monitor workflow efficiencies and warn employees when they’re getting too close to a dangerous situation. Wearable tech can even be used to track core body temperature, something that extreme athletes had only been able to monitor using invasive methods until 2020. In this way, wearables enable patients to have a deeper understanding of their health and stay engaged with their healthcare, which reduces hospital visits, reduces medical costs and improves overall patient outcomes.
Causes anxiety
Some of the most popular wearables encourage users to check their data often, which can lead to obsessive tendencies, rumination, and anxiety. These behaviors can also disrupt sleep and cause stress, which can contribute to mental health problems.
People with underlying anxiety may be particularly susceptible to this, given their elevated threat expectancies and heightened responses to uncertainty, which can trigger hypervigilant self-monitoring behaviors and prompt unnecessary medical care. However, it is unclear what the role of these technologies are in preventing or mitigating the development of health anxiety.
Using wearable devices may foster positive affective experiences, including a sense of empowerment and motivation, as well as accountability and self-care. Nevertheless, some negative emotions such as guilt and frustration could arise from not meeting goal expectations or being unable to use the device. Further research is needed to determine how the type of goals and feedback might impact a user’s affective response. For example, progress- or improvement-based goals could help decrease negative emotions associated with use of the device.
Volume of data
Many people use consumer wearable devices like Fitbits and smartwatches to track their daily activities such as calorie counts and exercise intensity. However, the increasing popularity of these devices has fueled concerns that activity monitoring may paradoxically reduce healthy behaviors by inadvertently discouraging or even promoting unhealthy behavior2.
As these devices improve, they will likely become more accurate and collect more data about an individual’s health-related activities. This information complies with the four “V” characteristics of big data, which will enable it to be used for personalized intervention, population pattern discovery and predictive models supporting patient-specific precision care.
Insurers are also seeing the benefits of supplying these wearables to their customers and employees, with CVS Health reporting that employers who offer five or more well-being best practices have lower turnover than those offering two or fewer (see 2021 eMarketer Digital Health briefing). As a result, these new digital healthcare tools may help insurers decrease hospital admissions, readmissions and associated costs and boost customer lifetime value.
What does the data mean to a person?
Wearables have already transformed how people track their exercise and calorie intake, monitor their sleep and manage their training regimens. But they can also provide a range of more complex metrics that are more useful for healthcare professionals, such as diet, posture, ultraviolet radiation exposure, and respiratory rates.
However, these devices have their own quirks. For example, software updates can skew a user’s measurements. One Koch Institute team found this when they noticed a sudden peak in their measured resting heart rate during a pandemic – it turned out that Apple had changed the way it calculates heart rates in its apps.
To address these challenges, some research teams are integrating their wearable technologies into specialized digital health programs. These include health coaching, personalised reminders and disease-focused digital education, as well as automated medication dosing with human assistance when needed. They also incorporate personalization strategies into the devices themselves to reduce the likelihood that users will abandon their device after a few months.
OnePhenix the only IPAAS software that connects your wearable data to your healthcare professionals. www.Onephenix.com.au