Wearable devices, led by smart watches and rings, are one of the most prominent, multi-billion-dollar technology industries, and are largely focused on health tracking.
These devices are touted as being able to accurately monitor a variety of health indicators, such as exercise routine, body temperature, heart rate, menstrual cycle and sleep patterns.
In this context, the Minister of Health in the United Kingdom, Wes Streeting, spoke about a proposal to provide millions of patients in the National Health Service with wearable devices (smart watches or rings), which will enable them to track symptoms from their homes, such as reactions to cancer treatments, according to what the “website” reported. BBC.
Many doctors and technology experts are still cautious about using the health data collected by these devices, as this raises questions about the accuracy of the data and the privacy of the information, which calls for the need to set clear standards for the use of these technologies in health care.
Zoe Kleinman, a user of wearable devices, said that she tried a smart ring from the company “Ultrahuman”, and “it seems that he knows about the disease before it happens (…) He informed me one weekend that my temperature was a little high, and that “My sleep was disturbed, and he warned me that this might be a sign that something was wrong with me.”
She added, “I ignored the matter at the time and took the warning lightly, but two days later I was lying in bed and discovered that I had an intestinal infection.”
She explains, “I did not need medical help at the time, but if I did, would the data from my wearable device help doctors and nurses treat me?” Many wearable device brands actively encourage this. For example, the Oura smart ring offers a service where patients can download their data in the form of a report to share with their doctor.
What do doctors say about wearable devices?
Dr. Jake Deutsch, a US-based physician who advises Ora, says wearable data enables him to assess overall health more accurately, but not all doctors agree that it is useful all the time.
Dr Helen Salsbury, a GP in Oxford, has seen very few patients come in wearing smart watches and rings, but she has recently noticed an increase in their use and this worries her. In this regard, she says, “I am worried about wearable devices because they may control the users’ decision regarding visiting the doctor. Thus, the user will only go to his doctor if the device tells him that he is sick, instead of making his decision on his own.”
“What wearables do is encourage good health habits, but the best advice they offer is advice that doctors have been giving for years,” says Salsbury. “The thing you can actually do is walk more, not drink as much alcohol, and maintain a healthy weight. That never changes,” Dr. Salsbury adds.
On the other hand, Dr. Yang Wei, associate professor of wearable technology at Nottingham Trent University, says, “When you go to the hospital and do an ECG, you don’t have to worry about power consumption because the device is connected to electricity, while a smart watch will not be able to do an ECG because it will drain the battery.” “Immediately.”
He adds, “Movement, whether from a wearable device or the person’s own movement, may create a kind of noise in the data you collect, and that makes it less reliable.”
Dr. Wei stated that the ring is placed on the finger, but the gold standard for measuring heart rate is from the wrist or directly from the heart, so if you measure it from the finger, you are sacrificing accuracy.
The role of software is to fill in data gaps, but there is no international standard for wearable devices, either for the sensors and software that operate these devices, for the data itself, or even for the format in which it is collected.
Challenges of wearable devices
The Apple Watch is known as the best-selling smartwatch in the world despite the recent slowdown in sales, but the company markets its technology using real stories of people who survived their lives because of the heart-tracking function in their watch.
Dr. Salsbury says, “From my personal experience, I have heard many of these stories, but what I have not heard until now is the number of false positive cases.”
In this regard, Dr. Wei tells a story that he described as a cautionary tale about a man named Ben Wood, who was outside the house when his wife received a series of disturbing notifications from her husband’s Apple Watch telling her that he had been in a car accident. She advised her to text him instead of calling him because he might need to keep the line open for emergency services.
The notices were real and were sent to her as an emergency contact, but in this case they were unnecessary. Her husband was at a race track and enjoyed driving fast cars. He admitted he wasn’t very talented at it but felt safe during the experience.
Commenting on the incident, he said, “The boundaries between an incident and an alert must be carefully managed,” adding, “I am curious to know how device manufacturers, emergency services, responders, and individuals think about this technology in the future.”
On the health front, Pritish Mistry, a member of the King’s Fund Research Center, agrees that there are major challenges around integrating patient-generated data into healthcare systems, and added that the discussion has already been going on for years in the United Kingdom without any clear solution.
He says there is a strong case to be made for using wearables in the UK government’s current drive to push care out of hospitals and into community settings. He adds, “Without this supporting foundation to enable technology in terms of infrastructure, and supporting the workforce to obtain skills, knowledge, ability and confidence, I think it will be a challenge.”