Wearable Health Technology: A Clinicians Perspective
The global market is expected to reach $19.5 Billion by 2022
Summary
With more than 400 electronic health record compatible wearable devices currently on the market, the number is expected to rise exponentially in the coming years.
Wearables will transform patient care as an enabling technology in the monitoring of acute and chronic conditions as part of health systems preventive care strategy.
Additional work in clinical outcomes is required before wearables prove they should have wide-spread adoption in transforming patient care.
Background
Wearables will evolve into hearables, implantable, ingestible and embedded sensors into clothing, steering wheels, doors, mattress beds, etc. toward seamless physiologic monitoring. However, clinical impact of these devices have conflicting results on clear patient outcomes.
Sensors fall into 3 main categories:
Mechanical: convert mechanical motion into electrical signal. Mechanical sensors use:
Internal Measurement Units (IMU’s) to measure planer or 3D movement.
Gyroscopes to measure rotation and acceleration (gravity vs movement).
Magnometers to measure relative position.
Pressure sensors to track forces exerted on or by the body.
Physiologic Sensors: measure biological signs
Vital signs.
Gastrointestinal & respiratory bodily functions.
Bioelectric activity (ECG, EEG).
Photoplethysmography detecting heart rate via light absorbance.
Bioimpedence sensors.
Biochemical Sensors: convert chemical or biologic data into electrical signals,
Mostly related to clinical applications.
Glucose
Alcohol
Electrolytes
pH
Oxygenation/gas sensing
Review
Several major challenges remain to the adoption of wearables by providers in various healthcare settings.These are listed in Table 1.The major concern is patient privacy and confidentiality. Wearables must meet HIPAA standards.The area of formal patient consent raises issues of providing enough information regarding what and how personal data will be collected and made available to third parties.Concerns over identity theft, data sharing when health coverage changes, as well as discriminatory healthcare practices based on available data.
Applications of wearables in a number of clinical arenas are outlined in Table 2
TABLE 1: CHALLENGES FACING WIDEPSREAD WEARABLES DEVICE ADOPTION
TABLE 2: POTENTIAL CLINICAL APPLICATIONS OF WEARABLE HEALTH TECHNOLOGY DEVICES
Conclusions
Wearables provide an opportunity to improve patient monitoring while also improving patient comfort and mobility in both the inpatient and outpatient settings.
Third party applications will become prominent in this field.
Next generation wearables will include algorithms for automated health event interpretation and couple medical conditions with specific patient context (activity patterns, patient preferences, sensory inputs)
As the challenges above are addressed, improved data collection, synthesis of actionable information, adept workflows are created, a more personalized experience will occur between the patient and the provider.