The Future of Wearables and Wireless Charging in Healthcare

March 17th, 2016

Wearables are changing the way we live, and the biggest sector in which they have the opportunity to make the biggest impact is in medical and healthcare. So much in fact, that IDTechEx forecasts that the healthcare, medical and fitness sectors of wearable technology will be worth $30 billion by 2025, representing the largest wearable tech category.

Personalized healthcare is by far one the most complicated areas, and that is why wearable tech and IoT together have the potential to make such a major impact. Physicians, patients, hospitals and insurance companies are all jumping on the bandwagon to find the best possible way to aggregate your personal data into actionable guidance and assistance, as well as simply improve your health.

Here are just a few of the ways that healthcare wearables are changing our medical environment:

WEARABLE TECH FOR THE HEARING IMPAIRED

Wearables are helping to break barriers between deaf people who use sign language and those who cannot understand. A team of researchers at Texas A&M are developing a wearable device to make sign language audible with a system of sensors that can recognize motion from hand gestures and translate sign language into words.

Photo credit: Texas A&M

ReSound is a smart hearing aid for people with severe hearing loss that allows you to ‘personalize’ your hearing experience by connecting to a smartphone app. The app allows you to control the volume of your hearing aid, as well as set your own settings (such as if you are at a restaurant or outdoors. The app even includes a tracker which allows you to find your hearing aids if they are misplaced! Click here for more information about wireless charging for hearing aids

Photo: ReSound Website

WEARABLES FOR MEDICAL CONDITIONS

Other types of MedTech wearables also facilitate services for people in need of certain medical checkups from home. For example, Omron Healthcare has developed a wearable blood pressure monitor that looks more like a cool smartwatch rather than your old-fashioned piece of medical equipment. It is also different because it takes your blood-pressure from the wrist (as opposed to the upper-arm), using special sensors that help you to get your arm into the right position in order to take an accurate reading.

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Another type of wristband, Empatica’s Embrace, was developed by MIT students for people suffering from Epilepsy. The wristband monitors stress signals and send alerts when detecting a potentially hazardous seizure. Even people who do not have chronic seizures can use the wristband to monitor stress signals.

WIRELESS CHARGING FOR MEDICAL WEARABLES

Imagine an elderly individual that has a hearing aid with a small replaceable battery that requires a recharge at least once a day. This is an incredible daily burden that this individual must to deal with for the rest of their lives. Now instead, consider how their quality of life could improve with wireless charging. All they have to do is drop the hearing aid in a box before bed and it charges their battery! Even more, the wireless charging device can even track the charging status.

One of the most important factors in analyzing information from wearable sensors is ensuring that medtech wearables are constantly working. This requires constant power sources for ALL wearables and electronic devices…and that’s a LOT of cords. Essentially, the charging experience is becoming a definite burden on users, as the current charging methods are just too complicated, especially for wearables and users are becoming more impatient when it comes to charging. Imagine just dropping your glucose monitor, smart glasses, or hearing aids in a box and…voila! They’re charging, without the hassle of having to fiddle with a cord.

Humavox’s tiny wireless charging receiver can integrate into the smallest of devices, allowing easy implementation for wearables in nearly any type of medical environment, all while providing a comfortable charging solution for users! With our ETERNA wireless charging platform, healthcare wearable manufacturers can create a wireless charging case that fits to the exact shape and elements of their device. This allows users to charge without even noticing, by simply dropping their device in a case after the day is done.

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