The role of MHealth and wearables for anticipation in medicine

Abstract

As the market for health-tracking wearable devices continues to expand, there is an emerging niche for healthcare applications, and data acquisition and usage. Within this area exists a wealth of clinically relevant data already collected from wearers, including physiological and lifestyle data. This information allows us to not only optimize current medical treatments and health planning, but also to expand preventive medicine by applying anticipation to medicine. We propose that much of the data collected through these wearable devices can be used to inform both patient and clinician of long-term physiological trends, and to anticipate potential onset of illnesses with a view to stemming their progression, or even mitigating their occurrence altogether. This paper highlights important issues within the health-wearable paradigm and presents upcoming applications of wearable technologies in medicine.