Wearable devices have become an increasingly popular trend. From fitness trackers and smartwatches to custom clothing items, wearable devices have quickly gained in popularity.
Medical wearables can help patients improve their health while decreasing medical visits.
Devices used for telemedicine and remote health monitoring may also help detect early symptoms of diseases and potentially avoid major health events. The data gathered could prove vital in early diagnosis or avoiding serious consequences later.
Biosensors
Biosensors are autonomous devices designed to provide quantitative or semi-quantitative analytical information about an analyte. They often utilize biological elements like antibodies, enzymes, microbes or nucleic acids directly interacting with it for testing purposes without needing additional reagents – making them suitable for point-of-care testing environments.
Example wearable medical devices that help manage diabetes include glucose monitors – biosensors that measure sugar in blood samples – as well as wristbands to detect heartbeats and other cardiovascular health indicators and smart coats that help identify cancer cells.
Startups and scaleups alike are turning to clothing-integrated sensors to advance telehealth and remote patient monitoring, using 5G networks for features like low-latency live monitoring and virtual doctor consultations. This enables healthcare providers to better understand patients in real-life settings while potentially saving lives – while expanding collaborations across institutions and patients alike.
Smart Clothing
Smart clothing has emerged that monitors multiple health metrics. This includes monitoring daily movement, heart rate and sleep patterns as well as any falls or cardiac events experienced. Clothing also can detect whether someone is falling.
Smart clothing provides more accurate monitoring of various biometrics than traditional wearables do, because its sensors come directly in contact with skin. One company called Athos has developed an athletic system containing sensors that monitor heart rate, breathing rate and muscle activity in addition to more traditional biometric data like weight.
These data could enable doctors to better assess a patient’s current state and predict future trends, rather than waiting until an annual check-up for insight. Being able to detect health risks earlier could reduce hospital admissions and in-person doctor visits – thus saving both money and lives. Healthcare systems will need to find ways to incorporate such devices into existing workflows and electronic health records in order for this technology to truly be implemented effectively.
Virtual Reality
Startups have increasingly turned to wearable technologies to assist people with physical rehabilitation and mobility assistance. Robotic exoskeletons developed by such startups are used by those with spinal cord injuries or impairments for greater mobility assistance; eliminating provider assistance while providing more tailored rehabilitation programs.
Wearable biosensors capture an array of physiological data for use in health monitoring and disease diagnosis. For instance, wearable blood pressure monitors allow patients and doctors to quickly detect elevated readings early, potentially avoiding emergency room trips while providing doctors with more effective treatments based on real-time information.
Other wearable devices monitor specific aspects of an individual’s physiology, such as fertility or stress levels. Devices like the Ava bracelet and Oura Ring fit like rings and monitor breathing patterns to predict when women ovulate; furthermore they motivate people with mental illness to exercise regularly and can identify depression or anxiety symptoms earlier than would otherwise.
