By Alexander Germanis
In the 1950s, Dr. Marion Collins’ daughter nearly lost her life because no one was there to inform her doctors she was allergic to a simple tetanus shot. Determined something like that would never happen again, Dr. Collins worked with a jeweler in San Francisco to design and issue the very first MedicAlert ID bracelet. This thin metal bracelet includes a person’s vital health information, giving them a layer of protection against potential future tragedies. The MedicAlert bracelet became, in essence, the first piece of wearable health jewelry.
Around the same time, Norman Holter, an American biophysicist, developed a wearable electrocardiography (ECG) device called the Holter Monitor. This first foray into wearable health monitoring was groundbreaking…and backbreaking. The original set-up weighed 80 pounds and had to be worn on the back.
A few decades later, wearable health technology entered an interactive world via a clever and (I hope, not intentionally) hilarious ad campaign summed up by the phrase: “I’ve fallen, and I can’t get up!” Life Alert wearable buttons could now connect high-risk individuals to medical help within seconds.
That history of wearable health devices has culminated to this point. Now, whether you have a preexisting condition or not, wearable health technology can do things Dr. Collins, Mr. Holter, and that little old lady on the floor could only imagine. Now, we can essentially wear our health on our wrists and look stylish doing it.
Health Makers
Concern for personal health has seemed to enter a new era since those simple days of bracelets and buttons. With each year, it seems, another flock of companies throw their hats in the ring when it comes to the wearables market.
Perhaps one of the most recognizable and earliest brands in this market is the Fitbit. (I have an off-brand version I named something similar. Let’s just say it rhymes with Fitbit.) Fitbit was acquired by Google in 2020 and is now just one of many pieces of wearable tech. Fitness trackers, ECG monitors, biosensors, blood pressure monitors, and smart watches have taken many forms from many manufacturers.
AliveCor’s KardiaMobile attaches to your existing smartphone, tracking heart activity by collecting data from sensors on your chest and fingers.
Apple’s Apple Watch monitors your heart rate, notifies you of irregularities, stores medical information, and has enabled fall detection – something that little lady in the 80s could have used. Oh, and it also tells the time.
Ava Women’s Ava Bracelet logs sleeping stress levels, resting heart rate, sleep time, and is specifically designed to track menstrual cycles.
L’Oreal, the French cosmetics giant, developed My Skin Track UV to monitor your exposure to ultraviolet light, pollen, humidity, and pollution. The sensor pairs with a mobile app and both are accessible through an app store.
Motiv and Oura are two companies straying from the bracelets, watches, and other wearables, and instead embrace the jewelry aspect first introduced by MedicAlert. The Motiv and Oura Rings use your finger to track sleep, heart rate, and other health activity, saving the data with either Google Fit or Apple Health.
Owlet Baby Care keeps our little ones in mind by providing wearables for infants designed to track their heart rates and oxygen levels. They also have streaming capabilities so parents can monitor the data in real time.
These are just some of the companies that have developed wearable health tech. Others include Abbott, Cala Health, Dexcom, Focuslabs, Garmin, Jabra Hearing, Medtronic, NeuroSky, Omron, Patient Point, Silvertree, Sleep Doctor, Vital Connect, Whoop, and Withings.
Information Brokers
Collecting your health data is all well and good, but without someone paying attention to that information, there is no point to it at all. Just as with Dr. Collins’ MedicAlert bracelet, it’s actually taking recognition of crucial medical information that is going to save lives or influence you to make or keep healthy habits.
Continuous monitoring of health indicators through the wearables — heart rate, blood pressure, sleep patterns, etc. — can give healthcare providers a more accurate idea of your health. This data can show your physician what negative health events may have occurred at an earlier time, enabling them to help you more efficiently and better tailor a treatment plan for you.
Realtime data providing fall monitoring or heartbeat irregularities have also helped save lives, notifying first responders of life-threatening occurrences.
Other wearables can make quality of life a lot better. While glasses, contact lenses, and hearing aids are grandfathers in the wearable health device world, other wearables like glucose monitors can make living with a life-long condition a lot less inconvenient. A glucose monitor can keep track of sugar levels in a person with diabetes, essentially doing away with the daily finger pricks and blood sugar scanning of the past.
As with most things regarding health, prevention is the best medicine. That’s why keeping an eye on your own health can make a significant impact before failing health can make an impact on you. According to a study from Deloitte Center for Technology, Media, and Telecom, 70 percent of people who use wearable health tech report an improvement in their health. Fifty-five percent of people polled also noted that they share their data with their healthcare providers.
Connect and Compete
Where would America be without our undying need for competition? It fosters growth, innovation, and, well, ego. Many wearable health devices and apps are designed with competition in mind, whether they encourage you to compete against others or just against yourself.
For years, I have been using the Strava app (among several others) to track my cycling (and sometimes kayaking and running). Not only can I compare my current data to my results from months and years past, but I can also see how I measure up against others in the area, connect to people throughout the globe, and share significant milestones in my fitness journey. Better yet, when I see someone has traveled a particular area more than I have or has completed a leg of a route faster than I did, it spurs me to get back in the saddle and try to regain my title. (My wife says, “You may be too competitive;” to which I reply: “I bet I can say that faster than you can.”) Strava can connect to the Apple Watch, Samsung Galaxy Watch, Fitbit, Coros, Garmin, and more.
Wearables and apps also often provide challenges in which you can engage. Although these can certainly be used to see how you stack up against others, I see them primarily as impetuses to work out more. After all, no one should be bigger competition to you than you.
Change Your Own Dang Engine Oil
Most of us have experienced the frustration of hearing our car make some unholy sound only for that sound to miraculously disappear when we take the car to the mechanic. Wearable health devices are like having a constant recording of our own engines, should they malfunction when no professional is around.
But just as with a car, it’s wise to know how to maintain the basics yourself, without resorting to professional help when something inevitably goes wrong. Using a fitness tracker — something as simple as a step counter — can make you aware of how sedentary or active you really are. Tracking your nutrition intake should encourage you to make better food choices. Tracking things like heartrate, blood pressure, sleep duration, and more can help you look for ways to actively improve your numbers and provide valuable data for your physician at your next check-up.
According to different 2023 studies, 35 to 44 percent of adults in the United States used a wearable health device. Those numbers will certainly only rise as costs of such technology continue to drop, options continue to grow, and even the styles continue to expand. Although you should not view your health lightly, with a wearable, you can at least view it conveniently.
