Tag: smartwatches

Wearable technology benefits become evident to doctors and patients, alike

| October 19, 2015

There are some considerable advantages to wearables and they are becoming increasingly obvious.

With all the different DIY monitors and devices that patients have to use at home – which now include wearable technology in many different forms – the shape of the relationship between doctors and patients is starting to change, as is the care available from doctors and the care patients can provide themselves.

Blood pressure and glucose monitors, fitness bands, and other devices make tracking easier.

Wearable technology has pushed this trend forward very quickly, as wristbands and smartwatches offer sensors that can perform functions such as heartbeat and blood pressure tracking, sleep tracking, activity tracking and a range of other capabilities. Not only is it giving patients the ability to better understand the functions of their body systems, over time, but according to Yale University medical professor, Stephen Huot, doctors are already starting to see the benefits of the use of these wearables.

This helps to explain why so many people are using wearable technology and why this trend is growing.

Wearable Technology - Doctor and PatientIn 2012, Pew Research Center conducted a nationwide survey that determined that even by that time, 69 percent of adults were monitoring at least one indicator of health and wellness. These included diet, weight or exercise. Among them, 21 percent said that they were using a form of technology to be able to track that particular indicator. That said, Pew now projects that as weareables become more readily available, it will skyrocket in popularity, to the point that people will be commonly using wearable or even embedded devices by 2025.

Pew also explained in the report on its research that among the survey participants, 46 percent felt that their behaviors in tracking their health indicator(s) had altered their overall approach to a healthful lifestyle or toward someone else for whom they were providing care. Furthermore 40 percent of the survey participants said that the data they had collected by tracking had driven them to pose new and different questions to their doctors, or had even encouraged them to obtain a second opinion.

For this reason, doctors are increasingly prescribing the use of wearable technology, particularly for monitoring certain chronic conditions, such as patients with diabetes.

Wearable technology could see greatly improved experience through tiny chip

| July 28, 2015

A WiFi reflector chip may be all that wearables need to enhance battery life and speed them up.

NASA researchers have now developed a type of WiFi reflector chip that does not require the use of traditional transmitters, and that is now showing a massive amount of potential for improving the experience associated with wearable technology.

These chips reflect the signal instead of relying on the usual type of transmitter, which offers drastic improvements.

Through the use of this chip, it makes data transfer as much as three times as fast as it would be through regular WiFi connections, and it uses notably less power. When you put this into context through its use with wearable technology, what it means is that it will allow for considerably greater battery life, and a notably faster performance. Since these devices are waiting to take off in the near future, this could mean that this type of development could make the difference in boosting their appeal to consumers.

The reason is that this WiFi reflector chip could potentially overcome some of the biggest wearable technology challenges.

Wearable Technology - NASAOne of the main reasons that consumers haven’t been as impressed with wearables as they could be is because of the battery life. The average device doesn’t last much longer than a day with standard use, and consumers require more than that from a gadget that many of them expect to wear all day and all night (to take advantage of the sleep tracking, alerts, and other functions that they feel might benefit them if they don’t take the device off).

When the WiFi connection isn’t as demanding on the device’s battery power, it means that it won’t run out of juice as quickly, and it could mean that wearables will start to last longer and it may even become possible to make them smaller, since the battery is typically one of the largest components – if not the largest component – that the device must contain.

The size of smartwatches has also been one of the issues that has been causing the sale of these wearable technology devices to stagnate, particularly among women consumers. Should it become possible to reduce their size without cutting back on their battery lifespan, that may also bring about some considerable appeal among consumrs.