Transforming Personal Healthcare through Technology - A Systematic Literature Review of Wearable Sensors for Medical Application

Wearable Sensor Health Technology (WSHT) captures, analyzes and aggregates physiological data to improve personal well-being. Recently the technology market is flooded with wearable sensors that measure health-related data and have a high user adoption. Nevertheless, these devices are almost exclusively used for fitness purposes and the healthcare sector still faces the challenge of constantly increasing costs. To respond to the necessary but rare use of WSHT in professional healthcare, we aim to identify the most promising areas for future medical implementation. Therefore, we performed a systematic literature search and reviewed 97 papers with regard to disease treatment, application area, vital parameter measurement and target patient. As a result, we could identify five potential areas for further research: (RA1) concentration on widespread diseases, (RA2) expansion of WSHT’s functionality, (RA3) diversity of vital parameter measurements, (RA4) proactive analysis of sensor data for preventive purposes and (RA5) promoting patient adoption through enhanced usability

Differences in Innovation Approaches between the Product Developers of Wearable Technology and Fashion Industries

The market size of the Wearable Technology (WT) industry will grow to over U.S. $100 billion by 2023 (Hayward et al., 2016). Despite this increase, the experts have pointed out that fashion companies are lagging in innovation in the WT domain. Researchers argue that, for successful product development (PD), WT teams must have transformational leadership (TL), which is found to be a key factor for a team\u27s innovative work behavior (IWB), which has three step, idea generation (IG), idea promotion (IP), and idea realization (IR). This study is one of the first attempts to investigate different levels of team\u27s TL and IWB between WT and fashion PD teams. The result identifies certain team behavior traits conducive for innovation, which fashion PD teams could utilize if they would like to compete against WT teams. The results also inform the mangers of WT and academicians who trains their workforce of the importance of skills required for IWB and TL

Exploring acceptability and feasibility of a wearable device to facilitate home phototherapy treatment for newborn jaundice in rural Scotland: an interpretive description study.

Jaundice is a common condition in newborn infants, turning skin colour yellow due to the build-up of bilirubin. Internationally, jaundice continues to result in newborn infants' hospital admission, forcing separation of family units at the pivotal point for breastfeeding initiation and bonding. The aim of this research was to explore - with healthcare professionals and parents - the acceptability and feasibility of a wearable device to facilitate home phototherapy treatment for newborn jaundice in rural Scotland. The research was undertaken through qualitative interviews, using Interpretive Description to accommodate various perspectives influencing acceptability and feasibility of a wearable device to facilitate home phototherapy treatment. Participants were recruited via purposive sampling from one NHS board in Scotland. Semi- structured interviews were used with parental dyads (n=4) and mothers (n=6). Healthcare professionals (n=9) were recruited onto two focus groups conducted in different geographical locations (an urban and regional hospital) in NHS Grampian. The Framework approach was used to thematically analyse the data. Miranda Fricker's concept of epistemic injustice, which proposes inequity due to unequal power dynamics between people or systems, provided a theoretical perspective to interpret key findings. The study found that, although parents expressed a desire for wearable phototherapy devices to facilitate breastfeeding and comfort for the newborn infant, they primarily wanted home-based phototherapy treatment. Study participants described a 'one-size-fits-all' focus for newborn jaundice, centred around quickly reducing serum bilirubin levels. Furthermore, healthcare professionals assumed that parents would agree that the use of overhead phototherapy devices was worthwhile despite the distress to mothers and newborn infants, because it was an effective means of lowering serum bilirubin levels and facilitating timely discharge from care. Parents perceived postnatal care of newborn infants with jaundice to be paternalistic, which was interpreted by parents as being evidence of healthcare professionals' lack of trust in their parental capabilities. Moreover, healthcare professionals did not trust their clinical judgement to assess and manage newborn jaundice, due to the fear that they would be held clinically accountable for serum bilirubin levels not improving. This affected healthcare professionals' ability to trust parental capabilities. As a result, the rural aspect of the study became inconsequential. The study concluded that parents were willing to compromise on size, functions, and usability of phototherapy devices to facilitate home-based phototherapy treatment in the short term. However, epistemic injustice towards parents and midwives impacted shared decision-making within care teams, which in turn obstructed the acceptability and feasibility of both home-based phototherapy in general, and more specifically a wearable device that could facilitate home-based phototherapy

Smart Glasses in Health Care: A Patient Trust Perspective

Digitization in the health care sector is striving forward. Wearable technologies like smart glasses are being evaluated for providing hands-free and septic-safe access to information systems at the point of care. While smart glasses hold the potential to make service processes more efficient and effective, it is unclear whether patients would opt-in to treatments involving smart glasses. Patients are not active users of smart glasses but are nevertheless affected of outcomes produced by the symbiosis of health care workers and smart glasses. Using an online survey with 437 respondents, we find that it is important to properly explain to patients why smart glasses are being used and to proactively address data privacy concerns. Otherwise, smart glasses can significantly increase risk perceptions, reduce patients’ estimates of health care workers’ abilities, and decrease patients’ willingness to opt-in to medical procedures

Digital health paradox: international policy perspectives to address increased health inequalities for people living with disabilities

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the uptake of digital health worldwide and highlighted many benefits of these innovations. However, it also stressed the magnitude of inequalities regarding accessing digital health. Using a scoping review, this article explores the potential benefits of digital technologies for the global population, with particular reference to people living with disabilities, using the autism community as a case study. We ultimately explore policies in Sweden, Australia, Canada, Estonia, the United Kingdom, and the United States to learn how policies can lay an inclusive foundation for digital health systems. We conclude that digital health ecosystems should be designed with health equity at the forefront to avoid deepening existing health inequalities. We call for a more sophisticated understanding of digital health literacy to better assess the readiness to adopt digital health innovations. Finally, people living with disabilities should be positioned at the center of digital health policy and innovations to ensure they are not left behind

The ethics of digital well-being: a multidisciplinary perspective

This chapter serves as an introduction to the edited collection of the same name, which includes chapters that explore digital well-being from a range of disciplinary perspectives, including philosophy, psychology, economics, health care, and education. The purpose of this introductory chapter is to provide a short primer on the different disciplinary approaches to the study of well-being. To supplement this primer, we also invited key experts from several disciplines—philosophy, psychology, public policy, and health care—to share their thoughts on what they believe are the most important open questions and ethical issues for the multi-disciplinary study of digital well-being. We also introduce and discuss several themes that we believe will be fundamental to the ongoing study of digital well-being: digital gratitude, automated interventions, and sustainable co-well-being

Wearable Technologies in Academic Libraries: Fact, Fiction and the Future

Chapter 7 of Canuel, R & Crischton, C (2017). Mobile Technology and Academic Libraries: Innovative Services for Research and Learning. Chicago, IL. ACRL. Nick Moline, a developer and early Google Glass Explorer, can still recall Google’s mantra when he was first introduced to the wearable device: “If you can bring technology closer to you, you can actually get it out of the way” (Moline, personal communication, December 29, 2015). Similarly, Steve Mann, a researcher and inventor widely known as the father of wearable computing once wrote that “miniaturization of components has enabled systems that are wearable and nearly invisible, so that individuals can move about and interact freely, supported by their personal information domain” (Nichol, 2015). Today’s wearable devices are the continuation and evolution of decades of research and development. This transition began with devices designed to be worn as backpacks, such as the 6502 multimedia computer designed by Steve Mann in 1981, evolved to a one-handed keyboard and mouse connected to a head-mounted display produced in 1993, and then advanced further into a wrist computer made available the next year. The first commercially available wearable device, however, was the Trekker, a 120 MHz Pentium computer with support for speech and a head-mounted display, which sold for $10,000 (Sultan, 2015). These early wearable devices, however, were characterized by limited functionality and bulky design. By the mid 2010s, fitness tracker devices emerged with their attractive designs targeting sport and fitness enthusiasts. More recent fitness trackers blend smartwatches with multiple other functionalities, combining health and activity monitoring as well as networking capabilities. There are many factors that contributed to the rapid proliferation of wearable devices in the last five years. These factors include the advent of more reliable Internet access; the ubiquity of smartphones; decline in cost of sensors, cameras, and processing power; and finally, a flourishing app ecosystem (Mind Commerce, 2014)