MEDTECH AND WEARABLES

The year 2020 pandemic, has given a different grasp to the Greek root “tele”. Meaning distant or far, “tele” now is the way to keep people together and close. And medicine and healthcare are deeply involved in the question. It has been a long way since the Holter monitor started to be used in the 1960s to evaluate heartrelated pathologic conditions in ambulatory patients. The beginning of the new century and the technological boost, brought easier and ready to use gadgets able to provide real time information on heartrate to everyday joggers, along with other simple related metrics. These health care wearables started to multiply in the market and every smart watch now, includes assorted kinds of health monitoring functions. Wearables evolved to monitor different biomarkers for medical chronic and acute diseases. It is expected that more sophisticated condition specific devices will keep appearing to monitor particular ailments.

These biomedical monitoring systems were initially focused in the elderly population, are progressively spreading to other populations, and keep moving from accessories to integrated clothing, body attachments, and body inserts. They represent a distinctive possibility to gain a deeper knowledge of how certain diseases evolve. As they become more precise, targeted, and available, they bring health care into a new era of personalized real-time medicine. As constituents of telemedicine, telecare, telehealth, or other rising tele-denominations, they are now embedded in healthcare industry and are making a significant impact in increasing number of specialties.

Personalized, self-worn, monitoring systems give valuable information for the owner and can transmit those measurements to caring physicians reducing the need of clinic visits. Home-based biomarker guided therapies can change the current approach of health care systems with clinical, economic, and social benefits. COVID-19 pandemic is a good example of the usefulness and safety of telemedicine and telemonitoring as shown by a prospective observational study in high-risk patients with a positive PCR test followed proactively with athome telemonitoring.

Emerging nanomaterials and flexible electronic technologies allow to incorporate multiple key functions into small places and diverse materials, like into a thin, flexible patch. Wearable monitoring systems find their place in many medical fields like for upper limb rehabilitation and other cardiac and muscle activity registration mobile healthcare applications.

The benefits of telemedicine and telemonitoring do not stop at the personal level. Private and public healthcare systems have the opportunity to redesign their pathways and optimize their resources making use of socialized financing of telemonitoring preparing the future.

Of course, there are concerns with medical wearables.Accuracy is one of them, but technology trends to get better in rising the trust on these devices. As in any internet-based technology, cyber-attacks may happen. So, security is one pillar on which developers must construct. Power source, duration, and size are always to be considered, specially if the device is to be swallowed or inserted under the skin. Alternative, non-toxic batteries are now available and being used to power medical robots to be swallowed. The fast-growing pace of the potential market is a warning for health authorities to keep a close look on updating approval processes incorporating cutting-edge technological advances.

Personal and cultural backgrounds influence the uptake of these technologies. Comfortable feeling and ease of use are what users look for, although keeping everybody happy is hard to do. Inserting a microchip under the skin is now possible. Yet, some people might find it odd to accept. But not the Swedish! In a country with rich technological advance and less concern about data privacy thanks to the high level of trust for organizations and institutions, thousands of residents have had microchips inserted into their hands. Local users find the system pragmatic, useful, and passive, as it has no energy source need.

The refinement, the variety, and the constant evolution of wearable medical devices puts them as a mainstay of the future mobile medical market, along with nanotechnology, robotics, artificial intelligence, and digital twins, a digital recreation of systems regularly informed by sensors. Their role in the field of health care keeps growing as they integrate into people’s daily lives.

Thor Nissen

Doctor, graduate in Clinical Pharmacology and MBA in Quality Management. He has managed to collaborate for the development of medicines in world leading pharmaceutical companies both in medical matters and in clinical research in new drugs, regulation, marketing and sales departments.

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