Wearables
Wearable technology consists of electronic devices that can be worn as accessories, clothing attachments, body implants or patches. Wearables enable a user to conveniently manage their digital life and health and wellbeing, and are typically paired with a smartphone to collect data and provide real time updates.
University of Michigan Wearables Summit Event
The 2021 Wearables Summit was hosted by the University of Michigan Biosciences department and Exercise & Sport Science Initiative on November 9, 2021. The morning session consisted of a panel discussion on large scale projects at U-M, emerging technologies and analytics, and future directions.
The event was kicked off by HV Jagadish, PhD, Director of the Michigan Institute for Data Science, who said “Wearables use complicated data”.He went on to mention that wearable tech is disrupting the fitness industry, but the problem is that “you get so many metrics that are related to the actual quantities, but the accuracy gets degraded”. The challenge the industry faces is finding an application to accurately assess the motion sensory tracking without variance. However, in the medical-tech industry, wearable devices are the new frontier for medical health and patient wellness.
There are several initiatives, research and solutions in wearable health tech happening across the university. Michigan researchers in wearables studies across the university include:
- Srijan Sen, M.D., PhD, of the Intern Health Study says “Wearables, for the first time, provide a way for objective information in real time data in domains like mental health”. The intern study focuses on using wearable devices to model and understand stress of aspiring doctors through their internships, in which they deal with life and death situations and extreme working hours. The study found predictors of onset stress, anxiety, and depression through sleep patterns. The research team focused its study to understand objective predictors of depression for interns. The length of sleep plays a big role: how much you sleep and when you sleep. Wearable technology allows the team to conduct research and collect data to better understand the biology and the underlying mechanisms of mental health and associations of depression. The team uses this data to create intervention signals through alerts like suggesting changes to their sleep patterns, and then collecting information on the impact of message signaling through the wearable.
- Huda Akil, PhD, of the Freshman Stress study, said “Stress leads to a number of psychiatric disorders.” This study focuses on college freshman at the University of Michigan andstress tests freshman throughout the year to find biological predictors to detect stress responses and anticipation, and the impact of social context. Researchers started using wearables to find data on who is likely to become stressed and find early markers to help students become more resilient. “Wearables are teaching us about the rate of depression”, said Akil, and specifically about the influence of developing stress and anxiety symptoms through changes in behaviors, resilience, and vulnerability.
- Sung Choi, MD, and team have created a research project around COVID-19 to monitor beliefs and physiological measures in college students at risk for COVID-19 and support their mental well-being using wearable sensors and smartphone technology.
- Sachin Kheterpal, M.D., MBA, of MiPACT study collaborates with Apple to collect data on a patients recovery process after surgery. Through his research, Kheterpal wanted to answer the question of “can wearables be the proxy for changes in life experiences and quality of life” through a longitudinal study to follow patients over a lengthy period.
Wearables leverage motion tracking and sensory technology to monitor, track and assess changes in behaviors and movement, transforming complex data into insights to communicate to patients and further understand human behaviors.These smart electronic wearable devices are worn close to a skin’s surface like a watch, ring, or heart monitor, to detect, analyze, and transmit a body’s vital information like pulse, oxygen, blood pressure through alerts and metrics. A user’s physiology is measured in real time, enabling the user to gather insights into fitness activity, sleep, movement, blood sugar levels, etc. Hospitals and research centers use wearables to learn about their patients remotely, providing 24-hour monitoring, health advice and recommendations, and data collection.
In the commercial market, wearables are often seen as fitness-oriented, but the future of wearable tech lies beyond fitness and expands into mental health, metabolic fitness, and personalized health knowledge. Wearable tech is a bustling industry that now spans a large range of applications and solutions and is changing the market of health-related innovation.