Wearable Tech and the Future of Healthcare

Data Collection That Can Save Your Life

We’ve all seen that one movie set in the future—or maybe an alternate universe—where the protagonist hears a beep on her wrist and out pops a hologram with important information. Which movie? Well, any of them, really. In fact, this is such a standard trope in sci-fi movies that it’s pretty much bound to appear in everything from cartoons to post-apocalyptic dystopia flicks.

While we’re still working on the hologram functionality, our wearable devices are edging ever closer to that prediction of the future. Consider the story our president and CEO Philip Turner told at the Client Conference: An outwardly healthy 18-year-old Florida woman was alerted to her life-threatening kidney failure thanks to her watch. She said she never would have realized anything was wrong if it hadn’t been for the persistent beeping of the wearable tech’s alert system. Her heart rate was dangerously high and, thanks to the watch, she went to the hospital where they confirmed her kidneys had failed.

While this may be the most dramatic instance of a piece of wearable technology saving a life, many others have emerged as well. A 32-year-old man was spared by his wearable when an ulcer erupted, resulting in an 80% blood loss and emergency surgery. A post-partum woman’s wearable tech watch likewise triggered an emergency alert when her heart rate become dangerously high. It was later discovered that she had hyperthyroidism.

Technology and medicine have always gone hand-in-hand. After all, even leach application was considered “technology” at one point, as with a lot of practices we would find barbaric now. We are excited to grow and develop so that Sigmund Software can continue to play a role in healthcare technology, particularly in the emergent field of wearable healthcare. We are ready for what’s to come and can’t wait to see how we can improve—and even save—lives in the future.