Today’s wearables are becoming smart devices with improved capabilities, and as opposed to simple step counters they are now used to monitor important health parameters, including blood glucose level, heartbeat frequency, and blood pressure. Thanks to these improvements, it became possible to monitor personal health without leaving the home area conveniently. However, the quality of the data which is read from these devices are still questionable since not as accurate as those in the clinical equipment.
Smart Devices Revolutionize Healthcare: Measuring Glucose, Heart Rate, and Blood Pressure
The overall market for tracking health data advances has been rapidly growing since when Apple Watch was first conceived almost a decade ago. Governments and firms anticipate that the existing billion dollar market for devices such as watches and bracelets used to track health will rise to over $100 billion before the end of the decade. This rise has been as a result of the growing popularity for consumer health technology thus enabling the real time monitoring of health by the people.
Anna Barnacka from the health tech company MindMics spoke about the progress of the industry during her keynote at CES in Las Vegas. Before the invention of smartwatches no one would have even fathomed it possible to track heart rate. Now, everybody is aware of it,” Barnacka pointed out. Such a shift goes to a variety of routes where consumers have taken a heightened interest in health and body measuring and looking after, through the aid of technology.
The potential of these devices is far more than mere health check up. For instance, MindMics was able to show how smart earphones with wave technology can help monitor heart conditions such as valve. These devices enable users to examine their heart health with the help of medical devices’ reliable precision, which has the potential to transform early identification as well as constant monitoring.
The earbuds have been tested in clinical trials to detect heart murmurs related to aortic stenosis which would often necessitate invasive testing. With further development of the technology, it may become an innovative solution to a range of ‘빅 데이터‘ diseases, providing early diagnosis without surgical interventions, affordable diagnostic technologies, and increased access to health care for everyone.
Dexcom's 'Steelo' Smart Patch: A Revolution in Glucose Monitoring
The over-the-counter smart patch called the “Steelo” is the latest product of California-based Dexcom that revolutionises the aspect of CGM. Compared to the traditional CGM equipment that trailed only to consider the insulin dependant diabetics, the Steelo patch is useful in tracking glucose levels for any individual. What this advancement does is create the potential for new forms of preventative health care where the users can learn how their bodies metabolize certain foods and how they react to different lifestyle interventions.
Jake Leach, the COO of Dexcom, expressed thatSteelopo is more accessible stating that these CGM devices can be accessed today by anyone who wishes to track their glucose levels. Formerly, PODs were popular only among diabetics; the Steelo Patch is designed to serve a much greater number of people who may have prediabetes but do not know it.
Current at $99 for two reusable skin patches which lasts a month, the Steelo is cheaper compared to other methods of continual blood sugar tracking. It’s very convenient to receive results in real time using a mobile application in the course of the day for observing glucose levels. This convenience makes it less difficult to ensure low impact nutrition as well as to watch how exercise influences blood sugar.
About 34% of the population of the United States or 100 million people are either in the state of prediabetes or have a condition characterized by high blood sugar but not high enough to be diagnosed as diabetes, as defined by the CDC. This knowledge, nonetheless, does not get to most of the affected people because they have never been tested. Thus, with the help of the Steelo patches that make monitoring of glucose level easier, people may be warned about diabetes and prevent its development.
As prediabetes and diabetes rates rise in the United States, Steelo is ready to become a major player in the American health equation. It could save many people from serious complications if they simply started attending to their glucose level before it reached fatal conditions.
Concerns Over the Reliability of Data from Smart Health Devices
Smart devices for chronic diseases, including wearable that monitor sleep apnea, wristband that check blood pressure without a strap or watch that can notify irregular heartbeats are among the popular devices. However, the flexibility of some of the devices in inputting data has been questioned among medical and scientific circles. It is important to note that the reliability of these gadgets even though convenient and provide some significant health information continues to be a question mark.
Diana Zuckerman of the US National Center for Health Research agreed that some of these products could be helpful, but pointed out that none of them was FDA-approved. Zuckerman pointed out it is different from pharmaceuticals that these connected devices have not been as thoroughly tested, making their data more questionable.
Zuckerman also emphasized the significance of the availability of the data that will allow evaluating the accuracy of the measurements made by these devices. Increased obscurity of the data destroys the foundation required for the public to assess whether or not these devices are being developed to perform progressively better and to trust their health monitoring capabilities.
Several companies such as Dexcom and MindMics have developed effective wearable health products but controversy still surrounds the general reliability of the gadgets. Some of the specialized doctors and researchers have supported specific kind of andrographolides for their effectiveness in specific contexts, while others have been skeptical about the reliability of the data they produce.
But similar worries were echoed by Tammy Brady, a professor at the Johns Hopkins University who focuses on pediatric hypertension. Although she agreed with the concept of presenting blood pressure data to a wider group of users, at the same time, she pointed out that the current readings derived from smartwatches and bracelets are scarcely precise. Brady said she hopes that about cuffless blood pressure measurements, once ISO standards are set, the testing gets ramped up and the devices get better.
