Electronics
of course, the information first has to be secured. Enter wearables. Encompassing watches and phones, they can gather reams of data on a subject’s daily routine before beaming it back to a technician many miles away. That’s echoed by yet more sophisticated biosensors, capable of measuring everything from blood glucose levels to muscle contractions. It goes without saying that for patients and clinicals both, the pivot towards wearables could be transformative. All the same, it’d be wrong to suggest that researchers can just sit back and expect the findings to roll in. For one thing, distinguishing useful data from mere noise is challenging, especially for a profession weaned on strict clinical trial protocols. That’s echoed by making patients themselves comfortable with new technologies, even as technical and privacy challenges make themselves felt too. Step back, though, and the revolutionary force of such devices feels impossible to ignore – especially when you appreciate the newest generation of quantum sensors gradually entering the space.
Heart through sleeves It’s hard to overstate the enthusiasm for wearables in contemporary medical life. As so often, the numbers here are revealing, with work by Statista finding that the global medical wearable devices sector could reach $83bn by 2026, up from barely $20bn in 2021. That’s echoed in specific markets too: the US alone could see the industry enjoy a CAGR of 14.6% through the end of the decade. At the same time, this energy is being taken up by particular companies. Eli Lilly and Merck are just two of the US pharma giants to invest heavily in wearable technology, while the European Commission is spearheading similar work from its headquarters in Brussels.
Speak to the experts, at any rate, and the boom quickly makes sense. For starters, suggests Dr Can Dincer, a sensors expert at the FIT Freiburg Center for Interactive Materials and Bioinspired Technologies, and the University of Freiburg, consider just how these devices make data collection – especially compared to the situation a few decades ago. Imagine you’re living in a rural location, Dincer says hypothetically, and you “need to drive two hours every week” to get something looked at for a trial or check- up. That’s not ideal – nor is the need for nurses to leave their clinic to monitor the vital signs of patients on the other side of town. But if the US still devotes some $400m a year to home medical visits for infants and children alone, Dincer says that wearable devices are quickly making many trips redundant. Dr Stefano Canali, a philosopher of science at the Politecnico di Milano, agrees, suggesting that “remote passive monitoring” is becoming an increasingly common idea across medical life.
Medical Device Developments /
www.nsmedicaldevices.com
Of course, none of this would matter if the devices themselves were unreliable. Fortunately – at least when it comes to pure data collection – that isn’t generally true. That’s apparent if you happen to own an iPhone: you may not conceive of it as a medical device, yet it faithfully registers the number of steps you do each day. When it comes to more specialised technology, meanwhile, sensors are powerful, versatile machines. Some, explains Dincer, focus on capturing physical signs: heart rates or body temperatures are two obvious examples. Chemical sensors, conversely, can be targeted to measure electrolytes. And while one-off data points are certainly useful, Canali says that what really makes these machines so special is their ability to “holistically” track the body – for instance, by helping us understand the relationship between heart rate and glucose levels.
Sensor applications
The practical opportunities here are unsurprisingly vast. At the University of Manchester, for example, a team of scientists is exploring how wearable sensors could provide insights into the vital signs of cancer patients. Other research is even more focused. At MIT, tests on mice suggest that the right sensor could detect fibrosis with an accuracy of 86%. That’s echoed by advances in so-called quantum sensors. Though both Dincer and Canali suggest that the technology is at an early stage of development – “I think that they are not really ready for a transition from the lab to real applications,” says Dincer – that could soon change. Collecting data at the atomic level, these devices could be a hundred million times more sensitive than traditional alternatives. Even so, the path to a sensor-centric future is far from guaranteed. One involves the technology itself. Quite aside from the limited spread of quantum sensors, there are plenty of more prosaic examples
Encompassing, for example, watches and phones, wearables can gather reams of data on a subject’s daily routine.
6,000
The number of new data science and digital hires recently announced by J&J.
Wall Street Journal
$400bn The amount the
US devotes to home medical visits for infants and children each year.
NCBI 73
Andrey_PopovShutterstock.com
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