The Future of Medical Wearables

The wearables market is expected to reach over $4 billion in 2017.¹ If that doesn’t paint the picture for a bright future, consider this: one in six consumers currently own and use wearable tech.² Clearly, the wearables market is exploding and is not about to slow down anytime soon; in fact, growth in the wearables market is expected to increase 35 percent by 2019.³ What might be surprising, however, is that wearables have an impact far beyond typical consumer uses, like activity tracking and smart watches, into medical applications.

The convergence between wearables—like FitBits and Garmins—and medical products are a natural progression. Although they are not yet a mainstay in the field, most medical device providers are adding wearable components to their product lines. To truly grasp the impact of this trend, one needs to understand how it differs from widely-used consumer products, the market drivers that are causing the demand and, perhaps even more important, what is powering these devices.

Medical Applications vs. Consumer
Let’s first look at how medical wearables differ from those on the consumer market. While the premise is the same—the products need to be comfortable, easy to use, and not cumbersome—their functions serve a different purpose. Whereas consumer fitness trackers can help users stay in shape, medical wearables can detect life-threatening conditions, collect biometric data to help with patient diagnoses, and even administer medicine to alleviate pain. Thus, consumer wearables can be considered a superfluous indulgence while medical wearables are more mission-critical.

Another differentiator, and a key reason why wearable medical device adoption is not yet mainstream, is the stringent safety and accuracy standards they must meet. Regulatory obstacles, compliance issues, and navigating insurance reimbursement must all be considered when contemplating the broader use of medical-grade wearable devices. Whereas the accuracy of popular wellness trackers has been hotly debated, wearable medical products must be validated by U.S. Food and Drug Administration and ISO standards, and accuracy and reliability must be strictly monitored. There’s a big difference between misinterpreting how many stairs a person climbs and measuring an irregular heartbeat.

Key Market Drivers
According to a recent Endeavour Partners survey,⁴ the most successful wearables are those designed to help diagnose, monitor, and treat specific conditions that cannot be addressed by a smartphone app. The same study also found that 50 percent of wearable users lose interest within a few months. And why wouldn’t they? The native Apple Health app can just as easily track the number of steps a person takes in a day or the number of calories a person has burned as an expensive wearable. Medical wearables, on the other hand, are being developed to address a host of specific problems such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, asthma, heart arrhythmia, pain management, breast cancer, and various other ailments. Instead of tracking information on a cell phone, the data is compiled by clinicians and other medical personnel to offer a diagnosis, help with patient management, and aid studies.

The increasing prevalence of diseases requiring round-the-clock monitoring is another key trend driver in the wearable medical device market. Specifically, patient monitoring, home healthcare, and health and fitness are key factors behind this trend, according to Future Market Insights.⁵ Additionally, technological advancements and attractive product features such as smartphone connectivity are also helping promote adoption of medical wearables.

Preferred Hardware
A product is only as good as the sum of its parts—something particularly crucial when designing safe and accurate medical wearables. In designing the hardware that powers these devices, engineers should consider several factors including (but not limited to) product lifecycle, size, resistance to body fluids, reliability, and haptics (sound and feel). Of course, this becomes even more challenging when there is an emphasis on wearability.

Patients don’t want to tote around bulky attachments, especially on a wearable device that is constantly with them. Adding communication capabilities to support growing trends such as telehealth means adding antennas, transmitters, and additional circuitry, which leaves less room for traditional components like switches. Generally speaking, switches allow users to interact with the products; and while they now must take up less space than before, they still have specific performance requirements to meet in order to operate reliably for many years. Switches must also stand up in the harsh environments of body fluids and sterilization chemicals.

To better understand these requirements, let’s look at some of the wearable medical devices currently available and in development, and the hardware powering them.

Cardiac Monitoring: Wearable ECG devices monitor heart rate to check for arrhythmias. These patches can record events such as chest pains, shortness of breath, and other concerning symptoms through a tact switch. When an event is recorded, the device gets to work taking vitals like heart rate, blood oxygen level, and skin temperature.

Infant Monitoring: Although it may sound like science fiction, even baby cribs, socks, and diapers are being influenced by the wearables trend in order to help improve infant health and give parents peace of mind. These devices can detect a wet diaper or body movement, and monitor blood oxygen levels. Powered by various sensors, these products collect data that may be used to shed light on unexplained infant deaths.

Pain Management: Wearable devices, which can deliver transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) or transport pain medication, are commonly used in the medical industry. From migraines to lower back pain relief, these devices need switches to actuate and function properly.

The future of medical wearables is bright and many big-name players are jumping on the bandwagon. Companies like Jawbone⁶ are reportedly winding down their consumer wearables business to focus on medical devices and Blackberry⁷ has announced similar plans to expand its licensing strategy for the “Enterprise of Things,” which will include medical wearable devices. With the global wearable medical device market projected to reach $12.1 billion by 2021 from $5.3 billion in 2016,⁸ it’s clear that the growth of wearables will be driven in large part by medical applications. 

References

1. http://bit.ly/mpo0617tp1
2. http://bit.ly/mpo0617tp2
3. http://bit.ly/mpo0617tp3
4. https://endeavour.partners/
5. http://bit.ly/mpo0617tp4
6. http://bit.ly/mpo0617tp5
7. http://bit.ly/mpo0617tp6
8. http://bit.ly/mpo0617tp7

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Mike Bolduc is global marketing manager at C&K, where he is responsible for leading market strategy and global growth efforts for the industrial and medical business segments. Mike has an engineering and business background and over 25 years of diversified experience in the automotive, semiconductor, HVAC, aerospace, industrial, and medical industries working for large global corporations such as Texas Instruments and Stanley Black & Decker.