Wearable technology is not new.
It begins with a smart ring.
It has a long history dating back as far as the 17th century with the Abacus ring. "Developed in the Qing Dynasty era, the ring once worked as a counting tool which allowed traders to perform calculations."
Now, we can observe that wearable technology has become a trend with great momentum.
Smart watches, which have entered our lives with the pandemic, are on almost everyone's arm and enable us to monitor our health data by socializing.
So what are
the HEALTH EFFECTS OF WEARABLE TECHNOLOGY,
or what could be in the future?
Accenture research shows that by 2030, up to 10% of current patient service demand will be met via self-care. Moreover; two out of 3 physicians now say they would prescribe an app to help patients manage chronic diseases.
Of course, IoT and AI have a big share in this business!
Wearable devices can be used as a health monitoring system during daily routines in many cases. It will only interfere with the state of future wearable technology in simple physical activities or in collecting biometric data. It is because wearable computers were developed by some researchers to not only improve quality, but to impact all aspects of life. It is an important development that wearables tend to increase the quality of life in terms of sustainability and put them into practice in terms of social public benefit and safety.
Wearable technology is an alternative for healthy lifestyles. They can be used to monitor users' health and physical activity. Wearable devices aim to increase the quality of life of patients by researching diagnosis and treatment methods. For example: Wearable devices help visually impaired people to find their way safely and easily by protecting them from falls and collisions on the street.
Health Benefits of Wearable Technology
Encourages proactive health
Benefits healthcare providers and employers
Monitors vulnerable patients
Real-time data collection
Continuous monitoring
Predict and alert
Empowers patients
Are they becoming a significant Internet of Things (IoT) market segment?
Individual measurement has become a new trend today, with 60% of United States citizens monitoring their weight, diet, and exercise programs, and 33% recording measurements of other factors such as blood sugar, blood pressure, headaches, and sleep patterns. In the United States, 27% of internet users monitor their health data online, 9% use health alert messages, and 40,000 health apps are available on smartphones (Swan 2013).
Most popular healthcare apps:
Source: Wearable Healthcare Tech
healthcare/medical devices market is expected to reach USD 27.49 billion by 2026, according to a new report by Reports and Data.
Wearable technology can also improve patient management efficiency in hospitals. Researchers aim to use wearable technology for early detection of health imbalances. Wireless communication in wearable techniques allows researchers to design a new type of point-of-care (POC) diagnostic devices (Ghafar-Zadeh, 2015). For example, garments integrated with wearable solutions such as commercial portable sensors and devices in emergency medical services, emergency room or intensive care unit settings have facilitated the continuous monitoring of risks that endanger patient life. The system enables the detection of patient health parameters (heart rate, respiratory rate, body temperature, blood oxygen saturation, position, activity and posture) and environmental variables (external temperature, presence of toxic gases and heat flow through clothing). It is to process data and transmit useful information to healthcare providers remotely (Curone et al., 2010).
Wearable activity trackers (WATs) have been used as behavioral interventions to increase physical activity and reduce sedentary behavior in the population. They found that wearable technical programs have the potential to provide effective, intensive, home rehabilitation (Nguyen et al., 2017).
Wearable technology could also help diagnose and monitor psychiatric disorders such as depression. Researchers have discovered a system based on wearable textile technology and instantaneous nonlinear heart rate variability assessment to characterize patients' autonomous status (Valenza et al., 2015).
Patients and healthcare providers must monitor the many factors that affect blood sugar dynamics (for example, medication, activity, diet, stress, sleep quality, hormones, and environment) to effectively manage diabetes. Recent consumer technologies have helped the diabetic community take great strides towards truly personalized, real-time, data-driven management of this chronic disease (Heintzman, 2016).
San Francisco-based microsensor textile company Siren has announced the first product using its proprietary Neurofabric material. The Siren Diabetic Sock and Foot Monitoring System and its accompanying app monitor wearers’ foot temperature as an early warning sign of inflammation and, subsequently, diabetic foot ulcers.
With the rising cost of healthcare, wearable devices and systems may have the potential to facilitate self-care through monitoring and prevention. For example, a wearable bioelectronics technology has been developed to provide non-invasive monitoring of sweat-based glucose level (Lee et al., 2017).
Wearable devices for managing Parkinson's disease offer great potential to gather rich data sources that provide insights into the effects of diagnostic and therapeutic interventions. Since bradykinesia is one of the primary symptoms of Parkinson's disease, the ten-second full grip action is commonly used to assess the severity of bradykinesia. They developed a wearable device to assess the severity of Parkinson's bradykinesia (Lin et al., 2017).
A device called Emma, worn on the wrist like a watch, prevents people with Parkinson's from shaking their hands, allowing them to move freely. Developed by Microsoft Research Innovation Manager Haiyan Zhang, the device is named after Parkinson's patient Emma Lawton, who helped Zhang with the studies.
Wearable devices have been developed to monitor cardiovascular and enable mHealth applications in cardiac patients. Wearable ECG monitoring systems with low power consumption have been developed (Winokur et al., 2013).
Wearable technology has long been used to improve the lives of people with disabilities. In the coming years, further development in this area is expected to further improve the quality of life, health care and rehabilitation of all people, including the disabled. For example, it is integrated haptics in clothing and textiles that can convert sound into vibrations to allow deaf people to experience music (Strapsco, 2021). Wireless wearables have supported mobility in patients. Activity monitoring is used to manage patients' chronic conditions (Chiauzzi et al., 2015).
The global wearable healthcare/medical devices market is expected to reach USD 27.49 billion by 2026, according to a new report by Reports and Data.
Asia Pacific is estimated to grow with the highest CAGR of 32% from 2014 to 2024. The most prominent wearable medical device product that is predicted to remain as such until 2024 are insulin pumps, followed by pulse oximeters, blood pressure monitors, and glucometers.
References
Ghafar-Zadeh, E. (2015). Wireless integrated biosensors for point-of-care diagnostic applications. Sensors, 15(2), 3236-3261.
Curone, D., Secco, E. L., Tognetti, A., Loriga, G., Dudnik, G., Risatti, M., Whyte, R., Bonfiglio, A., and Magenes, G. (2010). Smart garments for emergency operators: the ProeTEX project. IEEE Transactions on Information Technology in Biomedicine, 14(3), 694-701.
Nguyen, N.H., Hadgraft, N.T., Moore, M.M., Rosenberg, D.E., Lynch, C., Reeves, M.M., and Lynch, B.M. (2017). A qualitative evaluation of breast cancer survivors’ acceptance of and preferences for consumer wearable technology activity trackers. Supportive Care in Cancer, 25(11), 3375-3384.
Valenza, G., Citi, L., Gentili, C., Lanata, A., Scilingo, E.P., and Barbieri, R. (2015). Characterization of depressive states in bipolar patients using wearable textile technology and instantaneous heart rate variability assessment. IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics, 19(1), 263-274.
Heintzman, N. D. (2016). A digital ecosystem of diabetes data and technology: services, systems, and tools enabled by wearables, sensors, and apps. Journal of Diabetes Science and Technology, 10(1), 35-41.
Lee, H., Song, C., Hong, Y.S., Kim, M.S., Cho, H.R., Kang, T., Shin, K., Choi, S.H., Hyeon, T., and Kim, D.-H. (2017). Wearable/disposable sweat-based glucose monitoring device with multistage transdermal drug delivery module. Science Advances, 3(3), e1601314.
Lin, Z., Dai, H., Xiong, Y., Xia, X., and Horng, S.-J. (2017). Quantification assessment of bradykinesia in Parkinson's disease based on a wearable device. Paper presented at the Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC), 2017 39th Annual International Conference of the IEEE.
Winokur, E.S., Delano, M.K., and Sodini, C.G. (2013). A wearable cardiac monitor for long-term data acquisition and analysis. IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, 60(1), 189-192.
Strapsco (2021). Wearable technology guide for people with disab, Available from: https://strapsco.com/wearable-tech-for-people-with- disability/, Erişim Tarihi: 6 Mayıs, 2021.
Chiauzzi, E., Rodarte, C., and DasMahapatra, P. (2015). Patient-centered activity monitoring in the self- management of chronic health conditions. BMC medicine, 13(1), 77.