Abstract
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Sensors and wearables connected to smartphone apps (as part of mobile health, or mHealth) are among the many technological advances changing the face of healthcare throughout the world. Related technologies with which sensors and wearables can work include telemedicine, remote monitoring tools, wireless communication, and real-time locating services. Advantages of using sensors and wearables with mHealth apps include the following:
• As we wrote in the first of this series of editorials, technology empowers people to be more involved in their health by engaging them in an activity. • Sensor-enabled mHealth apps can track, for example, heart rate, blood pressure, and oxygen levels. • Such apps can also amass massive amounts of data for studying by health researchers, which advances us toward our goal of improving global health.
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Sensor-enabled mHealth apps are a part of mobile health solutions, which are an effective way of addressing some of the global health challenges such as geographic disparities in healthcare access, healthcare affordability, technology costs, and rising healthcare costs. These mHealth apps can cost-effectively improve healthcare delivery by connecting people with their healthcare provider, with tailored health information, and with securely encrypted lab test results and medical records. 2
Here is one example of how sensor-enabled apps are improving people's health: “A study of a physical activity program in the United Kingdom found that real-time mobile feedback combined with wrist-worn accelerometers monitoring physical activity yielded positive results. Those getting virtual interventions showed an increase of 2 hours and 18 minutes per week in physical activity and lost 2.18 percent more body fat than a control group.” 3
While no one can truly predict the future, researchers have some ideas about where the future of sensor-enabled mHealth is headed:
• Today's most commonly collected wearable sensor data are activity, sleep, and pulse. In the near future, we will collect activity, pulse, sleep stages, blood pressure, cardiac output/stroke volume (SV), electrocardiogram (ECG), stress (heart rate variability [HRV] and electrodermal activity [EDA]), respiration rate, oxygen saturation, carbon dioxide levels, temperature, hydration, and perhaps glucose.
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• Soon, you will be able to swallow an ingestible sensor as a pill, made of food ingredients, activated by chemicals found naturally in the stomach, and powered by human body fluids (no battery required). One use of this sensor can be to provide “real-time information about how the patient responds to medicine. The patients do not have to endure blood tests, x-rays, or biopsies for their doctors to determine whether a drug is working.”
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• Another use of ingestible sensors could be for combating obesity, by recording what a patient has eaten and comparing those data to the corresponding entry in the mood diary recorded via mobile app. At the same time, other sensors could record markers that may indicate emotional health or distress (e.g., cortisol).
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So far, healthcare has not taken full advantage of what could be considered a “technology revolution” characterized by continuous connectivity and our ability to collect and analyze “big data.” We believe that is about to change, and that sensor-enabled mHealth can be part of this transformation, this “reengineering of healthcare that better engages and empowers consumers, improves outcomes, lowers costs, and improves satisfaction for all involved.” 4