At CES, wearable tech blurs line between gadgets and medical equipment
The pursuit of health and wellness, on the surface, seems like a strange feature for the Consumer Electronics Show—an annual Las Vegas expo celebrating the latest and greatest in technology like 4K television screens, virtual reality gaming, and nearly every futuristic gadget under the sun.
But next-generation health monitoring—and the construction of machines and technology to better diagnose and treat particular maladies—were all the rage at CES 2018. With watches, phones, and jewelry now collecting data on wearers and uploading them to cloud-based servers, it’s never been easier for smart devices to keep track of how their owners are functioning and feeling.
“Consumer technology—there’s tremendous opportunity here. And we’re seeing this across the board, with wearables, with virtual reality, with a variety of other things,” Dr. David Rhew, the chief medical officer and head of healthcare and fitness at Samsung Electronics America, said during a CES panel on Jan 9. “They’re using it for treatment options that we never imagined before.”
Rhew told a story of watching a fellow passenger on an airplane lose consciousness. Rhew rushed to his aid, placing his own smartwatch on the man’s arm to determine the regularity of his heartbeat.
Rhew acknowledged such an action likely wouldn’t be officially condoned by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration—which approves medical devices for market and has been working to evolve the regulatory approach to digital health technology—but his point remained that an item once used simply to tell time is now capable of tracking vital signs to a more precise degree than just about anything outside a doctor’s office.
Wearable manufacturers and vendors eventually may face concerted pushback from the FDA or run afoul of Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) standards as the technology progresses. Experts at CES argued it’s going to become increasingly harder to argue a watch or a phone that can track sleep patterns, record heart rates, and monitor body temperature is not a health care device that would need to adhere to more stringent regulations.
Rhew touched on a handful of uses and applications that are available to consumers today via technology already on the market, and discussed a study Samsung recently undertook to see if smartwatches could be used for cardiac rehabilitation in patients that had recently suffered a heart attack.
Rhew said “many folks drop out” ordinarily, because such rehabilitation requires regular check-ins with and monitoring from doctors and specialists. But by using a watch to monitor progress, rather than forcing an individual to make an extra trip to the doctor, researchers saw completion rates rise in the testing group from about 40% ordinarily to “around 80%.”
Smartwatches in recent years have been a hot topic at CES, and 2018’s convention was no exception. But other wearables that could impact consumers’ lives in helpful and unique ways made a splash as well. Cosmetics company L’Oréal , for example, unveiled an ultraviolet light sensor smaller than a thumbnail that can help wearers avoid overexposure to the sun’s rays, potentially mitigating instances of skin cancer.
Philips, meanwhile, unveiled SmartSleep headgear that monitors wearers’ sleep patterns and works to boost periods of deep sleep, holding the promise users will wake up more rested and ready to start the day. And California-based Oska Wellness showed off an electromagnetic-field wearable, the Oska Pulse, and an associated app that together are designed to track and alleviate muscle pain.
