Wearable technology has made several quantum leaps since Dr. Yoshiro Hatano created the Manpo-Kei – the first wearable fitness tracker to combat obesity – in 1965. In the decades that followed, the world witnessed a rapid evolution that led to the invention of the Polar heart rate monitoring straps, the Pebble smartwatch, and finally a vast collection of smartphone-compatible watches, rings, and other devices mostly marketed to health-conscious consumers.
The wearable technology market is currently valued at 115.8 billion USD (2021, Facts and Factors market research data). By 2028, this market is projected to expand to 380.5 billion USD. While wearable technology can span numerous and varied uses, including defense and industrial applications and infotainment, the largest share of wearable technology device sales comes from consumers using smartwatches for health, fitness, or other wellness purposes.
Wearable health monitoring and the technology behind it have become so advanced that 91% of all consumers are aware of them and believe they add value to our health. In the past five years, wearables like watches, rings, and chest straps have been developed to measure heart rate, respirations, and sleep patterns. The most advanced devices also measure heart rate variability (a measure of autonomic nervous system balance), oxygen levels, blood pressure, and levels of physical activity, particularly when wirelessly connected to GPS-capable smartphones.
We can now adapt these technologies and drive their usefulness forward toward improved global health. Health metrics can be collected from a smartwatch, for example, so we can use our own data to get personalized health recommendations, obtain support for chronic health conditions like heart disease and obesity, and even be screened for disorders like atrial fibrillation or sleep apnea. With these types of capabilities, what could be next for the digital health wearable market?
Our Vision
An exciting direction for wearable technology involves the integration of artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms to gather, analyze, and interpret the data collected by many wearable devices at once. A single individual using a wearable device, for example, can learn in the privacy of their own home that they have a clinically significant sleep issue and might gain insight into strategies they can use to improve their sleep. A university research group can use the same information to study sleep issues in specific populations of individuals using aggregate data.
Patients with chronic heart conditions and sleep issues could also avoid visiting their doctor or local hospital in favor of securely sending their health metrics via telemedicine channels to gain personalized, professional feedback with better value for the patient and at reduced costs for their insurance company or healthcare system. When this becomes routine practice or combined with artificial intelligence, the potential for reducing global healthcare costs is enormous.
These technologies offer huge opportunities for personal health advancement, particularly when capabilities extend to measuring health metrics like sweat composition, body temperature, and heart rhythm – information that can aid those with diabetes, heart rhythm disturbances, and others at risk for chronic disease on an everyday basis.
The major issue with this type of information, however, is that most people hold their health records private, yet don’t consider that their everyday health metrics are also private, needing the same security and consent for their use. Anytime personal healthcare data is wirelessly transmitted, even to a healthcare provider, ensuring its security is paramount.
Brainstem is at the forefront of not only ensuring data integrity and privacy but also taking it one step further into a future where this kind of personal, valuable health information is useful not just for the user but for academia, industries, and agencies that can leverage aggregates of data into enhancing healthcare for everyone.
Such data integrity requires the highest level of encryption and anonymity available so that users can be confident that their information is useful to others while always protecting them from being anyone other than an anonymous provider of the information.
What Brainstem Offers Today
Brainstem has designed a wearable health-monitoring device that combines the best value for the consumer: real-time data collection through wrist-based monitoring of heart rate variability, oxygen saturation, heart rate, breathing, and blood pressure, optimized for scalability into the future.
This valuable health data is paired with a user-friendly smartphone app for optimizing autonomic nervous system balance (and overall health) with biofeedback protocols and personalized feedback. Data can be shared privately with one’s healthcare provider or digitally through blockchain technology for the anonymous exchange of the data securely purchased by data consumers worldwide – all while the user remains the sovereign owner of their information.
How Brainstem Takes Data Ownership into The Future
We propose that just as we can be compensated for providing blood plasma or giving consumer opinions, individuals should be able to add further value beyond gathering their health metrics for personal use to being able to improve global health. The metrics collected can be securely and anonymously transmitted through blockchain encryption methodology for data sharing while the user is compensated for their data and maintains sovereignty over it at all times.
Through the use of smart contracts and digital wallets, an open marketplace can now exist for a specific user to provide the right dataset to the right data consumer at the proper time. This win-win intelligent contractual marketplace incentivizes individuals who benefit monetarily while providing the information needed for optimizing research into providing solutions for the world’s epidemic of chronic diseases.
The reality is that most people lose interest in their digital wearable health metrics or don’t use those that are potentially valuable to them because they don’t know what they mean or how to use them. With secure one-to-one AI technology, the potential for gaining value from one’s own metrics is much greater.
With secure one-to-many connectivity and real incentives for sharing data, the greater worldwide community of researchers can also use the information for the benefit of our collective human health and wellness far into the future.
