You’re feeling feverish and breaking out in cold sweats. You know you should probably see a doctor, but you roll over in bed and reach for a thermometer. Within seconds it reads your temperature, transmits the data to an app on your smartphone, and tells you what to do to feel better.
This isn’t the future. Thermometers that can help figure out what’s wrong with you are already here, along with a variety of devices that let you take you health into your own hands.
The wearable electronics business—everything from watches to cameras—is expected to grow from $20 billion this year to $70 billion by 2025, according to a report by IDTechEx, a U.K.-based independent market research company. And companies specializing in medical technology, or medtech, are competing for their fair share of the profits.
At the moment, medtech companies are merely scratching the surface, says Pierre-Alexandre Fournier, CEO and co-founder of Montreal-based Hexoskin.
“It used to be you had very few sources of information that could be transmitted through sensors,” says Fournier. “But now there’s a lot of potential in wearables connected to apps, and we haven’t realized even 1 percent of it.”
Does all of this mean that someday a trip to the doctor will be obsolete? Not so fast. We’ll still need them to make a diagnosis, plan out a course of treatment, and write prescriptions. But with a boom in wearable devices, along with the growth of sensors and software, we are going to transform the way we interact with doctors.
Monitor your health in real time
Hexoskin’s Fournier is betting that one of these wearables will soon be popular with people who want to monitor everything about their health. The company is producing a snug but comfortable shirt made of polyamide microfibers—similar the material for bathing suits—that has built-in sensors designed to track your movement, breathing, and cardiac rhythm.
The Hexoskin shares the information with medical professionals, so your doctor can know all about your health in real time.
Devices like this “remember everything” about your medical history since you started wearing them, says Fournier. They can “give you advice, can help you to be healthier, and, in some cases, can help you take a preventive approach.”
Other innovators also have the big picture in mind. Kinsa, a WeWork Fulton Center member, produces smart thermometers that read your temperature and record your symptoms in an app on your smartphone. It can also share your medical data with caregivers.
But that’s just the beginning, says Kinsa founder Inder Singh. Not only can let you know whether you’ve caught that flu that’s going around, it can also use the information gathered from multiple uses to track what viruses are affecting your area.
Singh says the company wants to produce a thermometer that’s accessible and affordable to people around the world. The app gathers information that can then provide public health officials with an accurate map that shows what diseases are spreading across what parts of the globe.
“We’re going after a huge problem in health care,” Singh says. “We’re talking about being able to communicate with someone in real time when someone’s health status changes. The missing data set in medtech is real-time, geo-location based information.”
The company, which raised nearly $138,000 in crowdfunding, launched this year in time for flu season. The thermometers cost $19.99 and started shipping month.
A checkup, via your phone
Another medtech device that’s aiming to change health care is Modoo, a stick-on patch that lets pregnant women monitor fetal heart rate and movement. Instead of sitting in the waiting room for a quick checkup, they can use the magenta-colored sensor to monitor their baby’s health around the clock.
This egg-shaped sensor, a product of the Beijing-based ExtantFuture, is running an Indiegogo campaign this month. The product will be delivered to backers next April.
“In China, hospitals are crazy,” says Guanmei Yao, marketing coordinator for ExtantFuture. “You only have five to 10 minutes to talk to the doctors. Through Modoo, you can cut out that step and have access to the whole data about your baby’s health. Doctors can use this to know the baby’s condition, and the baby can get precise and timely treatment.”
Other medtech companies that are more established in the field include AliveCor, a mobile device that analyzes your heart using electrodes attached to your smartphone. Once the app interprets the data, it can share it with you and even recommend the next steps.
While the portability, comfort, and efficiency of wearable electronics might save us a trip to the doctor’s office, there’s danger in putting all this data into the hands of consumers, says James Hayward, a technology analyst at IDTechEx. But it’s not because doctors are opposed to making our lives easier.
“Let’s say a patient uses wearable electrodes, and they detect that the person has arrhythmia and the patient says, ‘I have this problem and treat me in this way,’” Hayward says. “The issue is if the diagnostics is wrong, the physicians can’t take responsibility.”
But then the question is, who does take the responsibility? Is it the hardware company? The patient? With questions like these, medtech devices often require years of testing until they meet all the regulatory guidelines—which, by the way, change constantly.
One thing’s for sure. It’s fine to use the doctor inside our phone for an initial checkup, but make sure to schedule a follow up, especially when medical attention is required.
“In the short term, web and app medical advice will always be of interest to people,” Hayward says. “We love to ‘Google’ things when we don’t understand something about us, but the reliability of the in-person doctor visit is going to stay. It’s easy to paint a picture of a human race that self medicates and self diagnoses, but it’s a long way off.”
Graphic: Vincent Conti