Healthtech & Wearables

Background

Since the early 2000s and the rise in mass production of microchips, wearable devices have experienced rapid growth and widespread adoption. Early devices, such as the first Bluetooth headset, fitness trackers such as FitBit, and collaborations between Nike and Apple established the foundation for users to track their movements and have more accessible data analytics on their health. Today, wearable devices have evolved significantly in both functional and clinical relevance. Developments, such as smartwatches and smart jewelry by Apple and Oura Health, now include advanced features that assess sleep quality and provide insights into chronic conditions like hypertension. 

How Wearables Help Everyday Users

Wearable technologies support individual health monitoring and early diagnosis, and can better assist individuals with more personalized forms of health care. By providing wearers with self-monitoring and actionable feedback - such as closing daily “rings” on the Apple Watch - these devices can empower individuals to make more health-conscious decisions and allow users to take a more proactive role in their care. There are multiple examples of Apple Watches catching cardiac arrests in individuals without preexisting conditions and complications. By alerting the user to an irregular heartbeat, users were able to know that their symptoms were a heart attack before it became fatal.

Integration of Wearables into Clinical Settings

As more people start to incorporate wearable technology into their daily lives, healthcare providers have the opportunity to increasingly incorporate data from these devices into clinical practice. Wearables provide continuous monitoring and real-time data, allowing clinicians to track and analyze patients’ health metrics in between visits, leading to early detection of changes in the patient’s daily condition. In a study done in 2023 by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute within the NIH, more than 80% of wearable device users would share information from their device with their doctor to support their heart monitoring.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has been implementing the Advancing Chronic Care with Effective, Scalable Solutions (ACCESS) Model to help people with Medicare with chronic conditions improve their health and prevent and manage their diseases. Through this program, CMS plans on using wearable devices to continuously monitor sleep, heart rate, movement, blood sugar, and other functions to connect to apps that coach people to make lifestyle changes that can benefit their behavioral and physical health. Additionally, major insurance companies, such as United Healthcare and Humana, have been encouraging the growth and uptake of wearables through health tracking incentive programs.

There is an increasing interest in the healthtech space in innovating ways to efficiently transfer data from wearable devices into data that is easily readable for providers and formats it in a way that highlights key details in a wearer's health information. New software to better aid physicians in managing and synthesizing data through the use of AI tools will continue to help with the transition of integrating data from wearables into patients’ records. For example, Epic Systems, the leading Electronic Health Record (EHR) software used to manage patient data, has been using AI to record conversations with patients and offer summaries to patients quickly. The new system has been met with enthusiastic feedback from clinicians, stating that AI charting reduced the amount of cognitive load that it takes to document and manage large-scale data, allowing them to focus on taking care of patients. Moreover, numerous healthtech start-up organizations have developed, or are in the process of developing, technology to enhance wearable health technology and enable EHR integration for health systems.

This type of comprehensive health data allows providers a more accurate and data-oriented understanding of their patients’ health, further allowing a more preventive and personalized healthcare and a chance to improve care, reduce costs, and make healthcare more efficient. By emphasizing a more preventative approach through continuous monitoring, wearable health technology represents how advancements in technology can be incorporated into users’ everyday lives to improve health.