Wearable medical devices are "fragrant" but there are data and safety pains

Today, Chinese people are facing more serious physical health problems. According to incomplete statistics, breast cancer is the most common cancer among Chinese women, with 21.6 cases per 100,000 people; there are 330 million Chinese hypertensive patients, which is equivalent to one hypertensive patient per 4 people; With the aging of the population, the number of patients with Parkinson's disease increased by more than 100,000 per year, currently reaching about 3 million.

In today's life, there are more and more factors that threaten people's health. As people's awareness of health protection continues to increase, various medical and health equipment are constantly moving toward the public's view. Among them, the demand for wearable medical equipment is also expanding.

According to Sohu.com, there are data showing that the size of China's wearable device market in 2016 was 18.55 billion yuan. In 2017, the market size has increased to 26.42 billion yuan. From the data, it is seen that the field of wearable medical devices is in the forefront.

Recently, wearable breast cancer testing equipment company Cyrcadia Asia has developed smart wearable bra inserts that provide accurate early breast cancer detection; medical device manufacturer Omron has developed HeartGuide smart watches that monitor blood pressure and heart rate in real time; Apple is Apple Watch has developed a new API to track symptoms of Parkinson's disease and more.

Now that there are many such products on the market, what is driving the development of the wearable medical device industry?

Wearable medical equipment is hot, what is the charm behind it?

In a short period of time, the market for wearable medical devices has increased a lot, so what are the hot factors for wearable medical devices?

First, it can be monitored in real time. Wearable medical devices can respond to the physiological data of the human body to the people's mobile devices through sensors, providing users with data, allowing users to monitor their physical health in real time.

This year, Asustek released its first smart bracelet, ASUS VivoWatch BP. Its main functions are blood pressure detection and AI health management. It is also one of the few wearable medical devices available on the market that can be used to detect blood pressure. It is understood that ASUS VivoWatch BP can record blood pressure readings together with other health data, including heart rate, sleep quality, stress index and activity data, and this bracelet can automatically identify the user's movement status, so that users can get The data is more accurate.

Users need to know their blood pressure, as long as you look at the bracelet, you don't need to use a traditional blood pressure meter to measure, which is faster and more convenient. If you see your blood pressure rise, you can take measures to reduce blood pressure, and reduce the symptoms of stroke and cerebral hemorrhage due to high blood pressure.

Today, most wearable medical devices provide real-time monitoring. For example, the Raiing intelligent children's electronic thermometer developed by Beijing Ruiren Technology Medical Co., Ltd. has functions such as high and low temperature alarms and medication reminders, and can realize remote monitoring of terminals. The smart bracelet mambo HR developed by Lexin Medical can accurately measure heart rate and record user's health data. The data monitored by these products is fed back to the user in real time, and the user can quickly take countermeasures.

Second, it can reduce medical costs. Due to the timeliness of wearable medical devices, it can release traditional medical resources and open up new medical tools.

For example, as the elderly grow older, there are often some problems. If you go to the hospital, you will go through a complicated registration process. If you use wearable medical equipment, you can save time and cost, and if something goes wrong, It can also be directly fed back to the doctor. The doctor can realize the timely home visit or remote consultation according to the feedback, which greatly reduces the treatment cost of both doctors and patients.

According to the Beijing Daily, 90% of the elderly in Dongli Community, Xili Community and Shilibao Community in the area of ​​Balizhuang Sub-district in Chaoyang District will be equipped with a set of smart wearable medical devices. The real-time monitoring data of these devices will be synchronized to the Internet through the Internet. Lizhuang District Second Health Service Center Information Platform. When the health indicators of the elderly are abnormal, the medical staff will rush to the scene to implement medical intervention.

For such small anomalies, wearable medical devices can assist doctors in giving patients timely treatment. At the same time, the patient can also correct the pathological changes in time through the change of the index, avoiding emergency and hospitalization, reducing the number of medical treatments, and alleviating the tension of the bed.

Third, provide medical big data . Wearable medical devices collect user health data that can be provided not only to medical organizations to serve patients, but also to different industries and to drive their development.

It is understood that companies such as Emdeon collect medical data from wearable medical devices through the Internet every year, and then compare and analyze more meaningful data to provide more valuable information to medical organizations. For doctors, this has already provided a great convenience, and the diagnosis of patients will be more scientific.

In addition to bringing convenience to healthcare professionals, the medical big data provided by wearable medical devices is also injecting fresh blood into other industries. For example, WellDoc is a wearable medical device company focused on diabetes management that provides data to insurance companies and insurance companies are willing to provide users with protection. As a remote cardiac monitoring service provider, CardioNet can provide data for research and development for research and development.

Big data technology is used more and more in people's real life. Wearable medical equipment collects people's body information and then integrates these data to provide people with more intuitive and effective services.

In summary, wearable medical devices can provide users with reasonable guidance to a certain extent, and at the same time, can bring data support to medical organizations and different industries. However, the current development of the wearable medical device industry is still in its infancy. It can be said that the advantages and challenges are coexisting and its products need to be improved.

Accuracy and safety need to be improved, wearable medical equipment is still on the road

Nowadays, there are many wearable medical devices on the market. It can be said that they have become the "fragrance" of many enterprises. However, as the saying goes, "The ideal is very beautiful, the reality is very skinny." Is the market for wearable medical devices really bright?

Judging from the wearable medical device products on the market, most of the products are lacking in precision, professionalism and meeting people's needs, and further improvement is needed.

First, the test data is not accurate enough and the experience is poor. Wearable medical devices provide technical support for the detection of human health big data, but there is a greater difficulty in identifying data accuracy.

According to Tencent's digital report, under the current technical conditions, the measurement of heart rate is basically accurate, but in other aspects such as blood pressure, there is no method for accurate measurement, and the accuracy rate is far from reaching the medical standard. For example, a 37-degree wristband can be used to detect heart rate and blood pressure, but when blood pressure is measured, blood pressure is 140 and no notification is received. This indicates that the data it detects is inconsistent with the monitoring procedure, resulting in no response from the bracelet, and natural users cannot take timely measures, so the experience is poor.

Second, personal information security issues. The wearable medical device is the device that closely monitors the health data in real time. It not only collects the basic information of the user, but also collects real-time objective vital information and subjective input event information. These personal privacy information is vulnerable to hackers, and once the user's privacy is attacked, it may threaten the user's life.

A network engineer in the domestic Internet security vulnerability platform Wuyun.com told the 21st Century Business Herald that there is no technical standard for network security in wearable medical devices. Not only that, there are vulnerabilities in the wearable medical device manufacturers in China, which can cause an attacker to steal the user's cloud information through the interface.

Because of the natural attributes of wearable medical devices, which have a strong degree of binding with the user's personal information, and the hacker is vulnerable to the invasion of interests or competitors, the privacy of the user will face great challenges.

Third, doctors are involved in low research and development. Recently, Liu Chengyu, director of the Joint Laboratory and a professor at the School of Instrument Science and Engineering at Southeast University, called for more research units and enterprises to truly invest in the medical research and development of wearable devices. He said that at present, many companies and institutions in the domestic wearable medical equipment industry do not have a strong research team reserve, so there is relatively little technical investment in the medical field.

Based on the low level of doctors' participation in research and development, blood glucose meters and sphygmomanometers that do not "see blood" in a certain sense are not reliable. Because these devices lack accurate medical properties, this is undoubtedly a challenge for wearable medical devices. One.

From this point of view, the development of wearable medical equipment is still very long.

The right medicine to promote the healthy development of wearable medical equipment

Because of the challenges in the development of wearable medical devices, most wearable medical and health devices currently only provide data monitoring functions, and can not do some very professional data collection. But in the future, wearable medical devices will provide users with integrated services for diagnosis, detection and intervention, thus providing users with the most convenient and practical mobile medical health benefits. In particular, improvements in wearable medical devices can come from three sources.

First, collect and aggregate disease data to make the monitored data more scientific. The main feature of medical grade wearable devices is that they target a certain disease. Since these patients have their own pathological features, the device is focused on the symptoms of a certain disease, and the data is collected and then encouraged by the state. The combination of graded diagnosis and treatment, and effective cooperation with medical organizations.

Not only the detection of medical-grade wearable devices needs to be strengthened, but also the wearable medical devices need to master the main patient population entrance and data monitoring portal, and then strengthen the recording, aggregation, collation and analysis of disease evidence to make the monitored data more effective. Sexual, medical and scientific.

According to the Arterial Network report, the digital diabetes care company Glooko's insulin management system uses the website or mobile app to obtain relevant data indicators of the user's blood glucose, and then conducts unified recording, tracking and analysis. Currently, Glooko supports 26 blood glucose meters and covers 85% of the nation's brands, and patients can use 8 mobile devices to collect data, which makes it easy to integrate the scattered data collected by different devices. The data given after the control experiment is then more credible.

Then, realize data sharing to promote the development of mobile healthcare. With the advancement of technology and the development of mobile medical platforms, future medical-grade wearable devices will promote their cloud construction, transmit data to the cloud, and realize interoperability, so doctors can make medical advice and prescribe prescriptions after teleconsultation. . If wearable medical devices can seamlessly connect patients, doctors and the cloud, this will quickly drive the development of remote mobile healthcare.

Recently, the "Intelligent Manufacturing + Cloud" Internet platform created by Huazhi Intelligent has realized the interconnection between devices and devices, between devices and enterprises, between enterprises and enterprises, and between enterprises and customers. In the future, if such a platform can be applied to the medical field, it will facilitate the sharing of medical data and promote the development of wearable medical devices.

Finally, medical support is provided to make it medically valuable. It is precisely because of the lack of effective medical professional resources that wearable medical devices lack real medical functions. For wearable medical devices to be medical, this requires the support of a strong team of medical experts and the implantation of more medical principles and technical services to enhance the value of their medical applications.

Nowadays, the development of wearable medical devices is changing with each passing day. What is worth looking forward to is the wearable medical device able to break through the dark clouds that hinder its development and rush to the sky?

Xi'an Healthway Biotech Co.,Ltd , https://www.xianhealthway.com

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