The impact of wearables on healthcare is profound and has wide-ranging consequences, including a rapid transformation of preventive care, patient adherence, engagement, and self-management.
Investments in wearable devices in healthcare have led to a wider basket of choices for boosting outcomes, empowering patients, and lowering overall costs.
There has been sky-rocketing growth of wearable technology in healthcare over the last decade or more.
A Facts and Factors study has already revealed how the worldwide market size for wearable devices is predicted to touch more than US$380.5 billion by the year 2028.
The biggest factor influencing the growth of the healthcare wearable market is the increasing affordability of these devices for customers.
Fitness trackers and other IoT wearables healthcare devices are readily available at more affordable price points, making them accessible to a wider section of consumers than ever before. These devices harness the staggering impact of wearable technology in healthcare, sensing, collecting, and uploading diverse physiological information for life improvement.
Wearables are the next big thing in personalized care with IoT driving the growth of the same through the integration of software, sensors, electronics, and connectivity. This enables better data exchange across operators, manufacturers, and other connected platforms. The devices have diverse applications in terms of tracking activities and health conditions.
While the growth of the smart wearable healthcare devices market is attributed to increasing availability and affordability, the features and benefits are also big draws for consumers.
Wearables are health trackers in their purest form, monitoring the heart rate, blood pressure, calories burned, number of steps achieved, exercise time, physical strain, and more.
Various technologies like IoT and AI are driving innovations with regard to additional tracking capabilities.
Wearables also generate smart insights for living a better life, while tracking physical training and overall physical health. They can also help in alerting people and providers with regard to any health deterioration or severe health conditions.
They can forecast health changes, stress, mood, and also measure athletic performance, age-linked ailments, and even blood alcohol content in more advanced avatars.
The future of wearable devices in healthcare is in monitoring patients and preventive healthcare.
People will learn to live with and manage chronic ailments while tracking their health with wearables and communicating or dispatching the same to their healthcare providers.
They will stay more connected to their physicians at a personalized level.
Remote patient monitoring (RPM) will go hand in hand with wearables for those with chronic ailments. Patients will look to track their blood pressure and heart rate while controlling their health regimes through independent monitoring.
Healthcare providers will find it easier to gather patient data including several vital readings. However, many chronic conditions arise due to lifestyle habits or behavioral patterns developed over several years and clearly disconnected from periodic treatments or visits to doctors. That is where the impact of wearable technology in healthcare is clearly felt, tracking patient changes, lifestyle habits, patterns, and enabling early detection of possible red flags, intimating both the patient and healthcare provider about the same.
Continuous collection of data will also offer an advantage of health metrics and tracking across diverse scenarios and activity types.
This will naturally work as an early indicator of any looming health condition in the future. Quick detection is thus possible while enabling a transition towards preventive healthcare and helping providers and patients spur corrective actions likewise.
The effect of these corrective actions can also be continually tracked, along with identifying side effects and understanding overall progress, thereby eventually creating a foundation for accelerated recovery pathways.
AI and ML (machine learning) will help in identifying users as high risk for specific conditions while gathering and mapping data at scale.
They will also enable recommendations for doctor visits or preventive actions. Wearables may eventually start asking questions which will help in determining whether doctor visits are needed or not.
Medical professionals will soon personalize healthcare solutions with personal datasets backed by wearable tracking. Wearable technology in healthcare is a major revolution that will have a hugely positive outcome for the industry.
The success of wearable technologies in healthcare applications and the healthcare sector will eventually be governed by the continuous use of intention, rather than just technology acceptance or adoption rates.
Wearables can continually gather and track data, along with flagging warning signs early, while recommending preventive actions and even doctor visits. Through data gathering and mapping, providers and users can find out more about potential health issues.
Several wearables are available for preventive healthcare including fitness bands, fitness trackers, health monitors, smartwatches, and other smart and connected devices.
Wearables enable greater visibility into user behavior, activity, and lifestyle habits, while continually monitoring vital statistics and supplying this information to providers whenever required. They also help in classifying potential risks and recommending preventive actions.
There could be privacy concerns with data usage and security in terms of using wearables for healthcare. However, privacy frameworks and measures are evolving and will eventually enhance security throughout the ecosystem.
