Take Your Health On The Go
Wearable technology has been a recent trend with a wide range of options from smart watches to heated clothing. While most think of the fitness industry when thinking about wearable technology, healthcare is using it to help address key issues with healthcare costs, aging generations, and the rise of chronic diseases. Today we are rounding up key hands-free items that are currently having a positive impact on the healthcare industry:
1) The Smartwatch
According to GlobalData, smartwatches accounted for nearly 60% of the overall wearables market in 2018. Apple Watch, Humi’s Amazfit, and the Fitbit Versa have seen the best performance in the market, but the Galaxy Watch is starting to see some recent traction after its release.
What makes these tech pieces so attractive is look and functionality. The watches boast apps similar to the ones in users’ smartphones and pair them with sleek body styles, making them both fashionable and functional. While most users enjoy the fitness aspects of the watches, Empatic’s smartwatch, Embrace2, is a medical-grade watch that has the ability to track and monitor sweat levels, detecting the onset of epileptic seizures with an accuracy rate of 98%. Oh, and these watches also tell time (haha).
2) Smart Glasses
With the rise of both virtual and augmented reality, eyewear now has the ability to be ‘smart.’ While Google Glass didn’t take off as a commercial success, it has great significance within the healthcare industry, providing many hospitals a tool that can harness technology for surgical and training assistance.
3) Hearables
The area of hearables is still very much in the early stages of adoption, but the technology offers a wide range of possibilities for both healthcare and the fitness industry. We can thank Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, IBM’s Watson, and Google Assistant for making wearables even ‘smarter.’ From reading texts, providing you the current weather forecast, or even asking questions such as “how do I stretch out tight hamstrings,” hearable devices provide valuable information to you, all through voice control.
4) Skin Patches
Skin patches have been around for a long time, but this market segment is starting to be included with wearable technologies because now they are being enhanced with technology that allows them to be connected with IoT devices. iRhythm recently launched Zio, which is a single use skin patch that is used to monitor heart rhythms for up to two weeks, remotely!
Here at Extract, we are all for innovation and making healthcare better for everyone. We help your departments automate workflows and expedite the process of getting documents and data into your EHR (or other downstream systems). If you would like to learn more about how we can better your manual document workflows, reach out today.
