Wear Your Health on Your Sleeve! How IT Is Dissolving Doctor-Patient Boundaries

IT is revolutionizing the healthcare sector, making healthcare more affordable, efficient and safer. Wearable healthcare devices are making life simpler, effective, and convenient, for both the doctors and the patients. Technology enables critical health information to be made available to the patient and the doctor even without a need for physical interaction. The doctors know their patients’ current health status on the go.

The possibility of diagnosis, therapy and monitoring, anywhere and anytime has brought a new range of opportunities to explore. Be it a lightweight device that keeps track of your exercise routine or a discreet device to keep your blood sugar level stable, healthcare companies today are employing cutting-edge technology to introduce innovative wearable devices every day.

  • Chronic Pains No More

Chronic disorders and diseases require constant monitoring. Wearable devices enable continuous tracking to enhance predictability and decrease response time for remedial action.

With a constant monitoring device, patients can understand the trigger for the pain. It can also alert the care provider with the patient’s status and location, if the patient is in distress and in need of emergency medical help.

Diabetes is an example of chronic disease that can be controlled using a wearable device – an insulin pump. Patients with severe diabetes need to take several insulin injections per day to maintain body’s glucose levels.

With an insulin pump, the patient can adjust the amount of insulin with the press of a few buttons, and the device ensures that your blood glucose levels are maintained. This allows patients and healthcare providers to manage diabetes in an efficient manner.

  • Therapy Monitors

Technology has enabled healthcare practitioners to monitor their patient’s activities and their vital information at all times. This allows them to analyze the data, understand the root cause and determine potential solutions.

An excellent example is that of a pedometer. A pedometer is a simple wearable device that counts the number of steps that the wearer takes in a day. Its brilliance lies in its simplicity.

A medical practitioner might advice their recuperating patient to walk for exercising the muscles just enough to prevent atrophy. However, walking can put stress on the bones and hence should be limited. This is where the pedometer comes in. It tells patients the ideal daily walking distance, and can predict exactly how much activity is safe for the bones to heal completely.

  • A Wearable Fitness Expert

Wearable health devices are also making headway into the world of professional sports. These fitness devices measure heart rates, breathing patterns and calories burned during exercise. Advanced devices can measure a particular muscle activity so that athletes can work on the desired muscle group accordingly.

Athletes can use these devices to determine their fatigue levels, calorie intake, time their exercises and improve their performances. In case of an injury, the device can be also employed for recuperative exercises.

What Wearable Devices Need

Although wearable tech is growing rapidly, there are a few concerns that need to be addressed. Standardizing the information gathered by such devices is a challenge. These devices should ideally generate one consolidated report which shows the patient history, reports and their ongoing therapy. Data security is also a concern.

However, by leveraging technology, wearable devices can be streamlined and managed more efficiently, thereby enhancing the quality of care.