Introduction:
Wearable technology makes it possible to continuously monitor physiological and biochemical indicators, as well as human behaviors and physical activities, throughout everyday life. Vital indicators, including heart rate, blood pressure, and body temperature, are frequently assessed, along with blood oxygen saturation, posture, and physical activity levels, using instruments like the electrocardiogram (ECG), ballistocardiogram (BCG), and others. Wearable cameras or video equipment could offer more clinical data. Wearable electronics can be fastened to watches, gloves, clothes, shoes, eyeglasses, and earrings. Wearable technology can develop into skin-attachable gadgets. Chairs, automobile seats, and beds are a few examples of items in the environment that might have sensors. Information is usually gathered via a smartphone and sent to a distant server for processing and storage. Two main categories of wearable technology are employed in the research of gait patterns. Healthcare practitioners may now analyze walking patterns with the use of gadgets like gyroscopes, multi-angle video recorders, and accelerometers. Additional health-related gadgets have been created, such as mobile phone applications and add-ons and on-wrist activity monitors like Fitbit. Gait assessment activities in various settings are frequently carried out in conjunction with wearable devices and data processing techniques.
How Can Disease Be Prevented and Health Be Maintained by Wearable Devices and Applications?
Improving health outcomes for the elderly population by offering preventative treatments has emerged as a key area for study and development. Some of the difficulties associated with identifying and treating unfavorable health issues in aging populations may be solved by wearable technology. The application of wearable technology in fall prevention among senior citizens has enormous promise. Each year, between 30 and 60 percent of older persons fall, and between 10 and 20 percent of those falls end in an injury, hospitalization, or death. The development of wearable technology and related algorithms to gather and evaluate gait (walking style) data for fall prevention has been the focus of recent research.
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Monitoring of Physical Activity and Interactions:
Extended periods of inactivity are linked to several unfavorable health consequences. Engineered a wearable device-based system to track student activities to examine if reminders could alter students' posture and have a beneficial impact on their wellness. After 20 minutes of sitting, wearable gadgets gave out vibration reminders. The approach was successful in altering students' behavior, according to the data, albeit it was unclear how this shift would affect their health.
A few scientists assessed the efficiency of monitoring language trends with cell phones and wearable technology. Using a language-tracking wearable device, the study performed a Language Environment Analysis (LENA) to gather information on mother-child communication. Mothers received comments about the communication pattern based on the data that was gathered. Mothers responded well to the wearable gadget and thought the communication data it acquired would help enhance mother-child contact, according to the after-study survey.
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Mental Health Status Tracking:
The field of creating wearable technology and algorithms to track mental health issues is still quite young. Certain wearables have built-in sensors that can identify many aspects of human physiology, including blood pressure, body temperature, heart rate, and other intricate vital signs (such as electrocardiograms). It is possible to create new systems that track mental health issues by using these signals. Applications for these systems are most frequently used in stress detection.
A framework based on machine learning and wearable technology was presented to identify children's stress patterns. To identify stress, the wearable gadgets gathered heart rate and auditory information. Through stress patterns, the framework may be utilized to monitor kid safety remotely. The study's findings demonstrated that, in comparison to audio-only techniques, the system performed better in suppressing noise signals when it combined heart rate and audio inputs. One technique for machine learning is the support vector machine (SVM). The optimal algorithm (SVM+Wrapper) has an accuracy of 93.47 %.
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Sports Medicine:
Athletes and coaches may use wearable technology to organize practice and competition schedules more methodically. A few scientists measured the jump-specific training and competition load in the players' leaps by using commercially accessible wearable devices as a legitimate and reliable way to track the jump load of top volleyball players. The study's findings also suggest that the gadgets had outstanding jump height-detecting capabilities. Because wearable technology can track functional movements, workloads, heart rates, and other variables, sports medicine may employ wearable technology more frequently to improve performance and reduce injury.
Some scientists came up with a way to track and identify heat stroke. Exercise in hot weather can put people at risk for heat stroke. The group put out a fuzzy logic-based technique for interpreting the information gathered from several wearables, humidity and temperature sensors, and ambient conditions. The system's ability to track heat stroke danger and notify users was demonstrated by the trial findings.
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Weight Management and Tracking:
Wearable gadget tracking of physical activity has grown in popularity as a way to assist people in determining the amount of calories burned and the intensity of their exercise. Consumer wearables, in particular, are becoming more popular among health consumers as a means of monitoring weight management efforts and results. A comparison and validation study was conducted on three popular consumer devices that measure exercise intensities. Fitbit Charge HR, Apple Watch, and Garmin Forerunner 225 were among the research gadgets. All three devices were used to assess the heart rates and energy expenditures of the 62 participants in the experiment, who ranged in age from 18 to 38. The hypothetical perfect "gold standard" test has 100 percent specificity and 100 percent sensitivity. Comparing the study's findings to the gold standard, all devices displayed large amounts of inaccuracies. According to this study, these devices have limitations as monitoring and result-measuring tools, but they could be helpful as a stimulant to boost exercise.
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Public Education:
Several reasons, such as the evolving healthcare environment, the shifting role of health professionals, shifting social expectations, the fast-evolving field of medical science, and the variety of pedagogical approaches, are all having an impact on the rapidly changing landscape of medical and healthcare education. Some of the strategies available to handle the evolving educational environment include technologies like wearables (Google Glass), simulations (part-time trainers, integrated simulators, virtual reality), podcasts and videos with flipped classrooms, mobile devices with applications, video games, and simulations. The public should be educated on health-related issues through the use of these technologies.
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Patient Management:
Additionally, wearable technologies can increase hospital patient management effectiveness. Wearable technology is expected to be used by researchers to identify health abnormalities early on. Researchers can create a new generation of point-of-care (POC) diagnostic gadgets with the use of wearable wireless communication technology. For instance, the constant monitoring of dangers that jeopardize patient life has been made easier by clothing coupled with wearable solutions, such as commercial portable sensors and gadgets in the emergency medical services (EMS), emergency room (ER), or intensive care unit (ICU) environments. To process data and remotely transmit helpful information to healthcare providers, the system allows for the detection of patient health-state parameters (heart rate, breathing rate, body temperature, blood oxygen saturation, position, activity, and posture) as well as environmental variables (external temperature, presence of toxic gasses, and heat flux passing through the garments).
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Survivors of Cancer:
Although up to 70 % of endometrial cancer survivors are obese and have the lowest level of physical activity of any cancer survivor group, lifestyle changes can have a positive impact on overall health. An investigation was carried out to assess the validity and acceptability of the Fitbit AltaTM physical activity tracker for survivors of endometrial cancer from a variety of sociocultural backgrounds. According to the study, twenty-five volunteers accepted the Fitbits well, and the population's level of physical activity was determined to be inadequate. Sedentary lifestyles and lack of physical activity are prevalent in breast cancer survivors. Wearable activity trackers, or WATs, were employed in different research as behavioral treatments to promote physical activity and decrease sedentary behavior in this group. They discovered that wearable method programs might offer home-based, intense, and successful therapy.
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Stroke Patients:
Stroke is a leading cause of acquired disability in the world's population, primarily affecting the elderly. In intensive therapy, conventional treatment paradigms can be costly and even impractical due to social and environmental issues. Wearable sensors were employed by researchers to track activities and give patients and therapists feedback. To assist patients with at-home training regimens, researchers have created a wearable device with integrated inertial and mechanomyographic sensors, functional movement classification algorithms, and a graphical user interface.
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Individuals With Injuries to the Brain and Spinal Cord:
Exercises are necessary for patients with brain and spinal cord injuries to enhance their motor rehabilitation. These individuals frequently require the direction of a healthcare professional since they lack the skills to monitor or evaluate their symptoms. Consequently, it is necessary to provide physiological data from patients in their homes to physicians. Just looking at wearable technologies for in-home health monitoring, evaluation, and rehabilitation of individuals with brain and spinal cord injuries has led to the conclusions of a few studies.
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Long-Term Pulmonary Patients:
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease is a chronic ailment that usually becomes worse over time, necessitating patient care and rigorous, long-term lung rehabilitation activities. For patients with persistent respiratory problems, a team of researchers created a multimodal sensors-based application with a remote rehabilitation system. The system included exercise tracking progress, patient performance, exercise assignments, and exercise assistance. It also contained a set of rehabilitation exercises tailored for pulmonary patients. The sensory data in the study might provide precise recommendations for pulmonary activities for the patients. To confirm if the suggested remote system can offer a convenient and affordable choice in the healthcare rehabilitation system, more assessment research is required.
How Are the Diseases Managed?
Over the past ten years, significant advancements have been achieved in the development of wearable device systems for healthcare applications. As explained below, wearable technology can improve the efficacy of disease management.
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Heart Disorders: Heart patients may now use wearable gadgets for mHealth apps and cardiovascular monitoring. Systems for wearable, low-power ECG monitoring have been developed. Heart rate variability (HRV) may be tracked using certain wearable technology. A researcher created a heart activity monitoring system (HAMS) that records the ECG signal using a wearable patch. In many settings and circumstances, wearable technology may be effectively utilized as a health monitoring system while going about everyday activities.
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Blood Disorders: Researchers investigating blood problems are becoming interested in wearable monitors. Applications for measuring and tracking blood pressure are among the most popular wearables. These include mobile apps, wireless upper arm blood pressure monitors with smartphone connectivity, cuff-free blood pressure sensors, and remote monitoring technologies. Through simpler tracking of repeated blood pressure readings, improved interaction with healthcare professionals, and medication reminder notifications, they may enhance hypertension control and drug adherence.
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Handling Diabetes Treatment: To properly manage diabetes, patients and healthcare professionals must monitor a variety of factors that affect blood glucose dynamics, such as medication, activity, nutrition, stress, sleep quality, hormones, and environment. The community of people with diabetes is making significant progress toward really customized, real-time, data-driven care of this chronic condition thanks to recent consumer technology.
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Parkinson’s Disease: Wearable technology has a tremendous opportunity for managing Parkinson's disease by gathering extensive data sources that provide light on the condition's diagnosis and the results of various treatment options. Since one of the main symptoms of Parkinson's disease is bradykinesia, a ten-second whole-hand grab action is commonly employed to measure the severity of the condition. A wearable gadget was created by researchers to gauge the severity of Parkinsonian bradykinesia.
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Autism: It is critical that kids with autism understand and categorize feelings like fear, contempt, rage, happiness, sorrow, and surprise. A small group of scientists investigated whether children with Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) would use a prototype therapy tool by using Google Glass to monitor the device's viability. The feasibility research showed minor variations in the way ASD impacted neurotypical control children performed on an emotion detection test, hence supporting the usefulness of a wearable device for social, affective learning in ASD children.
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Depression: Additionally, wearable technology can help in the detection, diagnosis, and follow-up of mental health conditions like depression. The automated detection of distinct mood states in both normal and pathological settings may be made possible by analyzing cognitive and autonomic responses to emotionally relevant inputs. To measure the autonomic state of bipolar patients, researchers investigated a wearable textile technology system that allows for immediate nonlinear heart rate variability evaluation.
Conclusion:
Wearable technology may offer creative fixes for issues in the medical field. Certain wearable technology applications, including weight management and physical activity tracking, are intended to prevent illnesses and maintain good health. Additionally, wearable technology is employed in the treatment of diseases and patients. Clinical decision-making may be directly impacted by wearable apps. Some people think that wearable technology, such as patient rehabilitation outside of hospitals, might save healthcare costs while simultaneously improving the quality of care provided to patients. Wearable device data generates large amounts of big data, which presents both opportunities and challenges for researchers hoping to leverage more artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities in the future. The majority of wearable technology is still in its prototype phase. To improve the usability and functionalities of wearable technology for everyday usage, issues including user acceptability, security, ethics, and big data concerns still need to be addressed.
