Why build Wearable Apps for Healthcare in 2016

While 2014 went down as the ‘Year of Wearable Technology’, 2015 emerged as a year where innovation in smart wearable technology led to big and profitable market. While innovators are using technology to re-imagine the health sector, the year 2016 is predicted to be the year where wearable apps for healthcare will remain key to the optimal operating of our future society.

The global market for wearable technology is predicted to grow to approx. USD 6 billion by 2018, and the impact of wearable technology is such that it has started revolutionizing healthcare from assisting doctors in the operating room to providing real-time access to electronic health records.

Global wearable devices market value (Image Source: Statista)

Wearable App for Healthcare: Challenges & How to Overcome Them

While wearable technology comes with the promise to transform the healthcare experience from the time you walk into a hospital until you return home - continually transmitting health data to your doctor virtually, it too comes with its own set of challenges.

Make Data Meaningful

An enormous quantity of data is expected to be generated with the proliferation of wearables in the healthcare sector. However, this opportunity must be managed with careful data analysis and algorithms so as to provide clinicians with accurate and relevant information as per requirement.

Security Enhancement

With the advancement of technology comes the need to deal with privacy and the risks associated with data security. Enhancing the security of patient data is indispensable especially when data starts being sent to a medical provider. 

Make Data Available

Even though the marketplace is awash in wearable technology for healthcare, it would not be of much help doctors treat their patience by harnessing these devices unless they are made data ready and accessible their own wearable app for healthcare.

Enhance Interoperability

Enhancing interoperability is another aspect that needs to be taken care of as there will be a number of contrasting systems that will contain these data sources. This can be either part of other healthcare providers or commercially available systems or even from devices that individual patients may purchase on their own.

Critic’s viewpoint - The Wide Angle!

Industry experts opine that the rate of innovation in wearable technology particularly in the healthcare segment has been so rapid that researchers in MIT (who are developing wearable device BioPhone) have been coining it with the term ‘nonwearables’.

At the same time, critics believe that wearables have been showered with too much of hype with very less productivity quotient that - wearables work! Moreover, there have been rising concern with issues related to security, development and infrastructure – besides the widening gap between wearable healthcare device and wearable application development. This calls for bridging of this gap with more businesses building wearable apps for healthcare that can help patients and medical providers benefit from the breakthrough innovation in wearable technology.

SYNOPSIS