Wearable technology in healthcare provides opportunities to improve quality and lower costs. It allows remote monitoring of patients with chronic diseases like diabetes and cardiovascular issues to increase adherence, detect issues early, and reduce complications. While challenges include privacy, security, and legislation, case studies show wearable technology can achieve quick wins by reducing unnecessary visits and medical errors. If integrated into a connected healthcare platform, it can help address shortages and improve outcomes while lowering expenditures.

1. Wearable Technology in health
opportunities and challenges
Nafiz Qasim @2017

2. Agenda
• Introduction
• Study Statement
• Numbers & Facts
• Literature Review
• Challenges
• Opportunities
• Findings
• Conclusion

3. Introduction
• “Wearable user interfaces describe the interaction between humans
and computing through electronics designed to be worn on the body”
*No clear common definition for wearable technology, Neither academia nor practice has yet agreed upon a single definition of wearables (Exploring the Opportunities of
Wearable Technology within Siemens AG) Göteborg, Sverige 2015 , this by Gartner (2014)

4. Introduction cont.
• Ability to
• ability to use sensors
• collect data
• display data to the user *
• Exchange data
• Examples of wearables are smartwatches, smart-glasses, wrist bands with sensors
and Qardio-Core **.
• Encryption, Back end analysis, RBE , DSS
*optional in some cases, alerting is an option
**https://www.getqardio.com/qardiocore-wearable-ecg-ekg-monitor-iphone/

5. Introduction cont.
• Wearable can be for single or multi purposes
• Non-invasive procedure
• No clinical trails needed *
• Passive vs Active mode
• Self decision for actions
• DSS decision base for action
• Collect only , no actions
• Preventive purpose (diabetes , cardiovascular)
• mAdherence purpose for chronic disease
* If clinical trails needed then it should follow the same procedure of medications
Figure above shows the Distribution of devices on different parts of the body. Source: Vandrico

6. Study Statement
• Problem : Healthcare expenditure is increasing yearly (some countries have 11-17% of the GDP, increase rate
1-2%) *
• Target : All countries are seeking a way to increase the healthcare quality , decrease (or at least maintain the
same) the total cost of expenditure
• Looking for disruptive , innovative way, solutions ,tools to fill the gap
• We do believe the revolution of mobile and smart technology are the right solution for achieving the target.
• Chronic Diseases are the main cost consuming for healthcare expenditure **
• Diabetes
• Cardiovascular
• Why Chronic Disease
• Long term
• Shape the majority of patients
• Wearable Technology has impact on it.
• Preventive Actions can be applied
* OECD Health Statistics 2015
** IDF DIABETES ATLAS Seventh Edition 2015, mHealth 2016;

7. Numbers & Facts
• Someone in the United States has a stroke every 40 s. Every 4 min, someone dies of stroke
• Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the single leading cause of global mortality and is projected to remain so.
• In Japan 26.7% of the population are now over 65 years old, and 40% of the population will be over 65 years by
2050
• The United States has the highest healthcare costs in the world, with approximately 17% of its GDP dedicated to
health care
• stroke costs in the US are $34 billion annually, including the cost of health care services, medications, and lost
productivity
• In the year 2000, the world was estimated to have close to 1 billion people with hypertension and an increase to
1.56 billion was predicted by 2025
Stroke patients and their attitudes toward mHealth monitoring to support blood pressure control and medication adherence
Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci. ISSN 0077-8923
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20388600
IDF Atlas 2015 UK

8. Numbers & Facts
• The global economic burden of increased BP was estimated to consume US$370 billion worldwide and 10% of
healthcare expenditures , control of BP could lead to a 32% reduction in stroke.
• $7.2 trillion, or 10.6 percent of global gross domestic product (GDP).
• 12% of global health expenditures is spent on diabetes , which is projected to be increased to 1 trillion by the year
of 2020.
• The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that globally, high blood glucose is the third highest risk factor for
premature mortality.
• Number of people with diabetes is 415 million (8.8% of population)
• Diabetes and its complications are major causes of early death in most countries.
• more than a third of countries do not have any data on diabetes related mortality;
Stroke patients and their attitudes toward mHealth monitoring to support blood pressure control and medication adherence
Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci. ISSN 0077-8923
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20388600
IDF Atlas 2015 UK

9. Numbers & Facts cont.

10. Numbers & Facts cont.

11. Numbers & Facts cont.

12. Numbers & Facts cont.
Practicing physicians per 1 000 population
- This is for top countries, you can imagine
how it will be in developing countries
- So lets rely on nurses and second level
service

13. Numbers & Facts cont.
Practicing Nurses per 1 000 population
- This is for top countries, you can imagine
how it will be in developing countries
- So lets rely on technology and mobility

14. Numbers & Facts
• 5 billion mobile phone subscriptions in the world
• over 85% of the world’s population now covered by a commercial wireless signal
• Connected devices are approximately 14 billion in 2014, and a raise of nearly 50 Billion is estimated by the year of
2020.
• There are 165,000 healthcare apps in Apple and Google stores, including approximately 40,000 for disease and
treatment management
• Google searches for “Wearable Technology” grew by 588% in 2013 (2)
Stroke patients and their attitudes toward mHealth monitoring to support blood pressure control and medication adherence
Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci. ISSN 0077-8923
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20388600
IDF Atlas 2015 UK

15. Literature Review & Background
• The first wearable device was created at 1960’s by Ed Thorpe and Claude Shannon
• The advanced technology produced more portable and comfortable components to be linked with human
bodies easily.
• Ability to collect data has increased big time in the last decade
• Our daily life objects become more smart with higher processing capabilities
• Number of connected devices are increasing and expected to reach 5 per person as a world wide
• Internet of Things (IoT) is a huge motivate for connected environments and devices
• wearable can be considered as subset of IoT
(Ali Feki et al. 2013).
McAfee & Brynjolfsson, 2012

16. Literature Review & Background cont.
• The majority of wearable devices are used for fitness.
• Giant IT companies started producing a lot of kits for wearable. watches, glasses , head – augmented reality
• Smartphones introduced the concept of mHealth and mobile apps for healthcare, apps extensively used and
experimented on healthcare. However , the results were not promising
• Many case studies were conducted for using wearable in the healthcare industry, and their results were very
promising
• Mobile Wearable technologies promises to reduce the cost and increase the health quality .(Saves lives and
money)
• Advanced countries started investing in wearable technology as they see it the best way to handle the un
balanced triangle (less resources in health, increase number of chronic diseases, increase in expenditure)
-Exploring the Opportunities of Wearable Technology within Siemens AG
-Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci. ISSN 0077-8923
-ECG Signal Classification for Remote Area Patients Using Artificial Neural Networks in Smartphone

17. Challenges
Main challenges for Wearable technology can be categorized in three areas
• Legislation
• Is it considered as clinical treatment?
• Who will be responsible for medical errors?
• Can we consider this as part of EMR?
• Can this be enforced by health providers , does it fit all kinds of people
• Privacy
• Patients personal data
• Physicians data privacy
• Patient centric authorization integration
• Personal acceptance, does these machines spy on us?
• Security
• How to ensure data that are not accessed by non authorized parties
• Data can be biased or noised in transmitting
• Treatment plans, shared among many parties

18. Opportunities
Wearable technology is really promising and many advanced countries are relying on it to solve the
problem they are struggling in, wearable can help on the following:
• Treatment & Consultation
• Consultation once needed , reduce the unneeded physician visits (save time for both parties,
reduce the cost on both parties)
• Use it as part of treatment : home treatment and hospital treatment
• Reduces the time for consultation , diagnosing ,and the medical errors (rather than the patient’s
description ,the device will describe the situation too)
• Increases accuracy of medical tests (ex. ECG, dose re-calculation)
• Adherence
• Assures patients adherence with their chronic diseases (private nurse)
• Refills , reminds, and continues monitoring, dose re-calculation
• Elderly Care -> psychology care
• Preventive
• Diabetes and Cardiovascular can be reduced by 20%
• Diabetes and Cardiovascular after fact impact can be controlled up to 50-60%, this will prevent
the complication on patients
• Reduces the medical errors, misses interpretations of tests results, and prevents the unneeded
treatments

19. Findings
- Many countries have already started to use the wearable technology in healthcare area
- The infrastructure is already available and connected objects are already living with us. Therefore,
there is no need for big investment on this.
- Quick win can be achieved and proved in many areas in less than 2 years
- Big data analytics can be used to predict patterns and advice health actions to be taken on the right
time.
- Huge amount of money can be saved and invested on other areas to keep increasing the health care
quality
- Saves many lives, just because a right medical intervention was taken on the right time, with no extra
cost
- The value of health benefit can cover all the challenges introduced by wearable technology (saving
lives is priceless).

20. Conclusion
- This technology is already tested and many case studies were done to prove the huge benefit of it, the
developing countries can utilize this to reach a higher health quality without increasing the health
expenditure. 3$ per population can be saved yearly. (Sweden case study)
- By Appling the wearable technology with a connected health platform surrounded by the right DSS,
the shortage of health practitioners resources can be solved and the time of practitioners will be
utilized to the right patients on the right time
- Legislation is not a show stopper and can be overcome, most of people already share more critical
information about themselves through social medias
- Acceptance of people to wear things is already proofed and the ratio was on the case studies above
80%
- Wearable technology is part of a multi-disciplinary parties process, it should be in synch with the
national healthcare platform to achieve the expected outcomes
- Private hospitals can apply this technology !!!