Wearables for Well-Being

What Is Wearable Technology?

Wearable technology refers to electronic devices worn on or stored inside the body that collect, analyze, and transmit data about the user’s physical or mental health.

Wearable wellness technology typically has sensors embedded inside, such as accelerometers or heart-rate monitors, that can send data to an app on a physical device or in the cloud. The app then processes the data to generate insights about the user.

Some examples include:

• Smartwatches: Smartwatches have multiple sensors that can track heart rate and physical activity. The Apple Watch and Samsung Galaxy Watch are two common examples.
• Smart rings: Smart rings can monitor variability in heart rate, body temperature, and the quality of your sleep. RingConn and Oura Ring are popular options.
• Fitness trackers: Fitness trackers collect data regarding physical activity, calories burned, and stages of sleep to help people boost their fitness or meet other health goals. Fitbit is a common option, and smartwatches, like those made by Apple and Samsung, also offer fitness-tracking tools.
• Continuous glucose monitors (CGMs): CGMs are biosensors that can track your glucose levels in real-time to help keep track of your metabolic health. Stelo and Accu-Check are both popular CGMs.
• Electronic textiles and smart clothing: With sensors embedded in their fabric, smart clothing can read vital signs and detect motion. Hexoskin and Under Armour sleepwear both use sensors to provide biofeedback.

While these are among the most common, others are gaining popularity, especially wearables for mental health. For instance, Abilify MyCite is a pill with an embedded sensor that sends data to an app when a mental health patient ingests it.

There are also hearables, which are worn inside the ear. They collect data about your heart rate and motion and transmit it to an app.

How Can Wearable Technology Improve Your Health?

Wearable technology can improve your health by tracking biological data that you or healthcare professionals can use to identify and treat issues. There are a number of popular uses for physical and mental health wearables.

Improving Sleep Patterns

Smart rings, smartwatches, and other trackers can use motion, heart rate, and body temperature sensors to monitor how you sleep.

Using these tools, you can identify poor sleep patterns or figure out why you’re having a hard time getting the rest you need. They can also keep track of sleep improvements as you progress through therapy.

Fine-Tuning Exercise

Many wearable health devices improve the quality and frequency of exercise, such as smartwatches, smart rings, and smart clothing. They typically use accelerometers, GPS, gyroscopes, and heart-rate sensors, combining their data to help you fine-tune your exercise routine.

Exercise wearables make it easier to track your progress toward your fitness goals. They are also useful for optimizing training by giving heart rate, body temperature, and other data you can use to gauge the effectiveness of different exercises.

Detecting or Preventing Falls

Wearables like smartwatches and medical alert pendants can detect when someone has fallen and alert their caregiver. They measure the wearer’s inertia to determine when they’ve dropped or lost their balance.

While a wearable cannot prevent falls in older adults, it can enable a faster emergency response, giving the individual and their family a greater peace of mind, knowing they can get help faster.

Boosting Heart Health

Chest strap monitors and smartwatches use accelerometers and optical sensors to keep track of your heart rate. These devices can tell when your heart is beating irregularly and detect patterns that could indicate issues or improvements in your heart’s health.

With heart rate wearables, users and physicians can detect arrhythmias and other heart conditions in real time. They can also get alerts flagging potential issues.

Improving Mental Health

Wearables can keep track of physiological changes that correlate with stress. For instance, when you feel stress, your heart rate and skin temperature may rise. Wearables can monitor these symptoms and use physiological data to approximate your mental state.

Using stress-tracking wearables, users and therapists can better understand which triggers affect mental health. You can also use the data to build relaxation routines to help you better manage stressful situations.

Optimizing Diet and Nutrition

The sensors in wearables can provide real-time metabolic data. For example, they can determine how many calories you’re burning during exercise or while at rest.

Armed with a wearable, you can gain insights into how your body reacts to different foods, such as sugars and proteins, and use this information to decide what to eat and when. Those with diabetes can monitor glucose levels, and people trying to lose weight can use the data from wearables to figure out how to burn more fat.

Improving Productivity

Using a wearable that provides sleep and energy data, you can plan your day around when you’re going to be the most productive.

The wearable can connect to an app that tells you when to rest, exercise, or schedule meetings, for instance.

Managing Chronic Diseases

A wearable device on a patient can detect physiological changes and, with AI, identify trends that could indicate improvements or regressions.

By outputting health data to a system that tracks symptoms as they manifest, a wearable can tell doctors how a patient is responding to specific medications or therapies.

What Are the Pros and Cons of Wearable Tech?

Physical and mental health wearables offer many benefits; however, there are a few things to keep in mind when deciding whether they would fit into your lifestyle.

Pros:

• Personalized health insights: Users can get recommendations tailored to their unique health goals.
• Preventive health: A wearable can make it easier for doctors to identify potential health issues and treat them before they cause significant harm to a patient.
• Continuous monitoring: In an instant and in real time, doctors and therapists can gauge how someone is reacting to treatments.

Cons:

• Excess data leading to inaccurate analyses: Data from wearables can be misinterpreted or mislead individuals or the healthcare professionals treating them.
• Data privacy issues: Wearables can output sensitive, unencrypted personal information to a database vulnerable to attack.
• Limited accuracy: Some wearables may be significantly less accurate than devices typically used by clinicians, which could lead to misdiagnoses.

When using wearable health devices, it’s best to consult a physician or mental health professional before acting on the data they produce.

How Is AI Being Used in Analyzing Wearable Tech Data?

AI can take raw data from wearables and turn it into actionable information. For instance, AI can:

• Detect anomalies: An AI-powered system can determine when someone’s biometric data varies significantly from a safe range.
• Provide personalized analytics: Machine learning models can adjust feedback from an app connected to a wearable according to a user’s specific circumstances.
• Integrate with clinical workflows: AI can assist clinicians by interpreting data and suggesting personalized healthcare plans.

Because AI can interpret data in real-time, its potential for enhancing the impact of wearables is difficult to quantify. But as researchers experiment more with AI, the number of applications is likely to grow.

How Do You Choose a Wearable to Reach Your Goals?

To choose a wearable that helps you reach your goals, you should:

1. Determine your goal, such as improving sleep, heart health, weight management, or general wellness.
2. Identify the wearables that have the sensors you need. For example, you can choose one with heart rate and body temperature trackers to monitor physiological symptoms that correlate with mental health.
3. Check the outputs of the wearable against clinical results to verify their accuracy.

With the wide variety of wearables on the market, you have plenty of options to find a solution that supports your physical or mental health goals and helps you start living a healthier lifestyle today.