Wearable Devices and the Future of Health Monitoring
Wearable Devices are no longer just fashion statements. Modern Smart wearable blend computing with lifestyle accessories to bring you technology that fits seamlessly into your daily life. They help monitor your health, provide reminders for important tasks, and allow you to access messages, music, and notifications—without pulling out your smartphone.
Today’s smartwatches and fitness trackers are pivotal tools for preventive medicine and proactive healthcare. Monitoring vital signs like blood pressure, heart rate, oxygen level, sleep patterns, and physical activity is now effortless, blurring the lines between healthcare and lifestyle.
Health monitoring wearables not only promote a healthier lifestyle but are also aiding in the early detection of chronic disease by continuously tracking critical health metrics.
How does Smart Watch and Fitness tracker work?
Fitness Tracker
A fitness tracker acts as a slimmed-down version of a smartwatch, built for continuous data collection of activity levels and vital signs. Equipped with wearable sensors like gyroscopes, accelerometers, and PPG (Photoplethysmography) sensors, they transmit real-time health data to a health management platform. This functionality is an exciting example of wearable computing evolving for educational purposes and real-world benefits.
Smart Watch
A smartwatch, like the Apple Watch, goes beyond health monitoring. It offers mobile functions like music control, calling, email notifications, and fitness tracking, combining multiple tech domains. Data from smartwatches is often stored in the cloud, enabling deeper analysis of trends related to Body Mass Index (BMI), oxygen level, and other health metrics. Devices like the Apple Watch exemplify how processing power has empowered daily healthcare.
What is the difference between Smart watches and fitness tracker?
Fitness tracker
Activity trackers focus primarily on gathering health-related data—steps taken, calories burned, heart rate, stress levels, and sleep patterns. Most models come equipped with GPS, accelerometers, and PPG sensors to enhance physical activity monitoring.
Smart Watches
In addition to the core functions of a fitness tracker, smart watches integrate smart communication features. Devices like the Apple Watch can even link up with VR headsets and VR devices for an immersive health experience, providing future potential for fitness in a game format or virtual reality settings.
What all Health Parameters does Smart Wearable track ?
Every smart wearable equipped with wearable sensors can typically monitor
- Blood Pressure
- Heart Rate
- Calorie Expenditure
- Step Counting
- Body Temperature
- Pulse Rate
- Oxygen Level
Such health monitoring wearables redefine the boundary between medical-grade equipment and consumer tech.
How Fitness tracker / smart watches track heart rate ?
These devices have PPG sensors that monitors the heart rate. Red / Green light in device on the wrists measure changes in blood volume change. This generates PPG waveform that determines individual heart rate. This data can be correlated with various other parameters related to Body Mass Index (BMI) to track stress, heart rate variability etc.
How Fitness tracker / smart watches track foot steps?
Fitness tracker / Smart watches have accelerometer sensor. These 3-Axis accelerometer measures motion, deviation, movement in all direction to track movement or running pattern. As these smart wearables are usually worn on wrist, chances of error in reporting is high. Most desirable device to track movement foot steps can be ankle sensors which is much more accurate.
How Fitness tracker / smart watches track blood pressure
Fitness Tracker / Smart watches track blood pressure throuh PPG sensors. These sensors measure the Pulse Transit Time (PTT) to evaluate blood pressure. This refers to the difference within oxygenated blood and deoxygenated blood vessels carried through arteries.
How do fitness trackers measure calories?
Smart wearable devices measure calories expenditure while monitoring the heart reate. Heart rate is measured with PPG sensors. With information wrt to BMI already fed into the device, calculating count of calorie expenditure is done.
How Fitness tracker / smart watches track sleep pattern?
Tracking my sleep and Sensing light sleep and deep sleep?
Smart watches / Fitness trackers are able to approximate the sleep patterns with Actigraphy – tracking movements during sleep to realise sleep pattern. These trackers monitor hand movements through gyroscopes and accelerometer. The variability in hand or body movement helps devices to identity the stage of sleep, whether it is stage 1 / stage 2 or REM sleep stage. Actigraphy along with Heart rate variability, helps to determine the sleep stage. However, data accuracy of sleep stage is not that accurate as, there can be error while recording hand / body movements.
How Fitness tracker / smart watches track stress?
Fitness tracker / Smart watches measures stress while measuring heart rate variability (HRV) through PPG sensors. HRV data along with body temperature, sweat levels score the stress level. This data is read correspondingly with sleep data to identify the stress category or stress score.
Side Effects of Wearable Technologies
Wearable Technologies has penetrated to our daily lifestyle to an extent that its role complementing our healthy management cannot be neglected. Studies is being carried out to analyse and minimise the extent of side effects of wearable technologies. Although side effects of wearable is yet to be documented and discussed in detail on technological front, however certain aspects at the outset can be attributed to both behavioural or technical.
Health Anxiety
Although no substantial evidence of negative outcomes of wearable technologies is reported, however as these smart wearables highly influence behavioural pattern of an individual, there is high probability of development of health anxiety. Consistent monitoring of health metrics in absolute scenarios can create an unwarranted panic situation for an individual. Thus, this data needs to be corroborated with other health metrics like – age, time of day, physical exertion, or routine etc. These wearable devices are helpful for preventive medicine but data must be interpreted wisely and with consultation from a physician.
Inaccuracy of data
Moreover data inaccuracy due to sensor reporting or device malfunctioning can also lead to inappropriate decision making for certain immediate concerns that might need critical attention. Like in case of overexercising or overeating. Place of usage of these devices on different parts of the body can also cause variability in data capturing which can also report inaccurate data. Factors like smart textiles, device fitting, and skin conditions can affect data collection.
Electromagnetic Field (EMF) exposure to human body
These smart wearable devices generally follow standard prescribed EMF threshold values, however, consistent exposure or over exposure of human body to EMF can lead to severe pain, nausea. Today’s modern lifestyle has left human body to tremendous exposure to EMF. EMF energy arriving at the human skin is dominated by the distance between the EMF emitting device and the skin. Consistent exposure to electromagnetic fields (EMF) from wearables can, in rare cases, cause discomfort, though most devices conform to safe EMF levels.
Does Fitness Tracker / SmartWatch steal your data
Data Privacy is one of the major concerns for these wearable devices. Fitness trackers usually store data in the device which can later be transmitted to the computer through USB. Smart watches transmit data to app paired with mobile. No such stringent data privacy guideline is laid out to keep check on data leakage, if any. Data privacy remains a significant concern. While fitness trackers store data locally and transfer it via USB, smart watches use cloud platforms, potentially increasing exposure risk.
How inaccurate is Fitness Tracker / Smart watches
Inaccuracy of fitness tracker / smartwatch can be majorly attributed to the placement of wearable sensors on the part of the body. Placement of device on Ankle is reported to be highly recommended leading to minimal error. Smart Ring or NFC rings is considered highly reliable for tracking vital signs just because of its presence on fingers.
Here’s the list of Mean Absolute Percentage Error Level based on the placement of Sensor on Human Body as per the American Journal of Public Health and studies reported in the New York Times
| Device | MAPE (Mean Absolute Percentage Error) |
| Ankle and Thigh | 1% |
| Waist | 3% |
| Wrist | 15% |
| Overall (normal speeds) | 7% |
| Overall (slow speeds) | 40% |
Source:https://ijbnpa.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12966-022-01350-9
Following table elaborates the kind of error you can expect from the fitness tracker / Smart watches.
| Problem | What Happens |
| Heart rate errors | Fitness trackers often guess heart rate too low. |
| Calorie tracking mistakes | They usually underestimate how many calories you burn. |
| Accuracy issues | Things like exercise type, wrist position, and skin can affect results. |
| Step count errors | They miss about 9% of steps on average. |
| Sleep tracking mistakes | They overestimate sleep time by 10% and miss wake times. |
| Aerobic capacity errors | They overestimate VO2max by 15% at rest and 10% during exercise. |
Conclusion
With the introduction of smart wearable, health management has come a long way shifting from traditional therapies reactive to proactive healthcare approach. Health management has become more of identifying disease at a very early stage leading to early diagnosis and cure. Solutions powered by wearable computing is a new way of managing health. Data display wrt steps counting / calorie spent on fitness trackers have a behavioural motivation to work towards a more healthy lifestyle. Reflection of results over display screens push for a more active approach, bringing a positive outlook in today’s fast paced lifestyle.
Although these data inputs should be taken into consideration with actionable insights from consultation with physicians, as acting alone on data from these trackers in absolute might not be justified based on your daily lifestyle.Whether it’s through tracking activity levels, oxygen level, or enhancing motivation through gamification in the gaming industry, smart wearable devices represent the future.
The evolution of smart clothing, smart fabrics, and epidermal electronics will only deepen their impact.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should I Purchase Smart Watch or Fitness Tracker
Selecting the device depends on your requirement and budget. Identifying the purpose of device can help in zero-ing down on device. For basic tracking wrt calorie burning, HRV, body temperature, steps counter – simple fitness tracker can solve the purpose at lower cost. Smartwatch can be a better fitment, in case you plan for multi-functional device which helps in communication and managing notifications. If you need only basic health tracking (calories burned, steps counted, etc.), a fitness tracker suffices. Opt for a smartwatch like the Apple Watch, if you want communication and extra apps.
Are these Smart Wearable devices accurate
Accuracy of data depends on the physiological status and placement of fitness tracker sensor on the body. Table mentioned above reflects, tracking sensor placed on anklet in much more accurate compared to wrist or other part of body. Physical activity status like sweat, overexertion can lead to inaccurate tracking by sensors.
How much can I trust my Fitness Tracker for health data
Health data from these device can help you with preliminary data for proactive actions. Action on these data should be taken in consultation with physician.
How should I use fitness tracker
Fitness tracker is ready to use device with basic Body Mass Data (BMI) Input from the user. It displays basic data on display screen for corrective health actions. Data is stored in the device which can be downloaded using an USB.
How to pair up Smart Watch
Smartwatch has to be paired with a smart phone with connecting through an app. Basic BMI data input in the app and your Smart Watch is ready to use. Health management data collection is usually stored on cloud servers accessible any time.