The world of technology has incredibly advanced over the past few years. Since then we have definitely come a long way and our regular watches or the old pedometer have been replaced by way more innovative technologies such as smartwatches. This allows you not only to keep track of time or count the number of steps taken, but also offers much more advanced solutions that provide you with lots of different healthcare options. Unfortunately, smartwatches are still often associated with some health obsessed people or health enthusiasts even though ordinary people can also sufficiently benefit from their use.
Let us have a closer look at some of the most significant health features:
- heart rate monitor Your heart rate measures how fast your heart is beating to pump blood throughout the body. If the heart rate seems to be up or down without any clear reason, this can indicate a problem. The monitor feature may help you notice the problem deviation on time or even identify approaching heart attacks.
- headphone audio levels The feature may prevent your headphone audio from result into a temporary damage, such as muffled sounds, ringing in the ears or even hearing loss.
- blood pressure monitor This kind of monitor features provides people struggling with the diseases, such as hypertension, with a constant opportunity to check on their blood pressure whenever is needed.
- sleep tracker Sleep tracker provide insights into your sleep habits and can help you to get a better sleep as well as understand your sleep patterns
- respiratory rate monitor This allows you to detect any deviations or anomalies in a breathing rate
- mobility tracker / activity monitor Activity tracker provides us with the opportunity to keep track of the steps taken or kilometers travelled throughout the day
- body measurements Body measurement feature allows to monitor a lot of different aspects of your body, such as fat percentage, body temperature, mass index, etc.
However, such technologies can have not only positive, but also negative effects on human health. The most obvious downside of the technology is possible skin irritation or allergic reaction to the materials in the watch band, which may be easily noticed by itchiness, redness, or swelling symptoms. Another thing people are still concerned about is electromagnetic radiation emission, which in theory may increase the rate of causing cancer. Moreover, wearable technologies are believed to steal significant personal data that customers are not willing to share.
What is the future of wearable technology?
Despite all the possible risks, I personally consider the future of wearable technology in healthcare to be bright. Smartwatches are expected to reach way more people and have way more treatment applications, anomaly detection, disease prevention as well as remote monitoring, which could be used in hospitals and be your doctor’s favorite gadget.
With the help of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning algorithms, wearable sensors are without any doubts expected to save more lives in the future.
references:
https://digitalhealthcentral.com/2021/04/05/what-is-the-future-of-wearable-technology-in-healthcare/
I’ve used smartwatch for quite long period of time and for me, it was really useful when I did sport. I knew how many steps I do daily and my heart rate while excercising. I also consider sleep tracker as a very useful function. However, I decided give up using smartwatch, because the notifications that were coming all the time, were distrurbing and I coudn’t concentrate.
I agree that the pros of wearable technologies highly outweigh the cons. Even the fact that the doctors will be able to observe health metrics of their patients for previous weeks or even months and track the dynamics of the development of certain diseases bring lots of opportunities for heathcare development.
“I’m a big fan of my Apple Watch and use it daily. It has definitely become one of my most used electronic devices, especially when it comes to staying active. The step and calorie tracking features are really useful, but I feel like there’s still so much potential for smartwatches to become even more practical and efficient. I’ve heard rumors that they might even be able to check our body temperature in the future, which would be amazing. Overall, I think there’s a lot of room for growth and development in the world of smartwatches.”
I agree with the author that smartwatch can give the user lots of useful insights on their health, especially it is very helpful for people doing sports. Although, I think that such technology can make people too obsessed with their health, when they constantly check their heart beat rate and other metrics.