Dive Brief:
- A new report suggests that wearable devices could transition from wrist-worn trackers to health sensors completely embedded in a user's body within a few years. This conclusion comes from a report by PSFK and iQ by Intel, an online magazine curated by employees at Intel.
- Today, the report notes, there are basically three categories of wearable devices: those designed to connect person-to-person, those connecting a person to a computer, and those that treat a person as a computer. The third category includes augmented reality technology and wearables that interact with the cloud, such as Google Glass.
- Over the next few years the report predicts that the nature of wearables will expand to the point where communication and control over them will expand to glasses and jewelry, and that by 2018, almost all features could be implanted, according to mobihealthnews.
Dive Insight:
So, over the next few years we can anticipate becoming cyborgs... or at least wired to an extent our parents could scarcely have imagined. I'd argue that this conclusion is a bit ambitious, as I can't be the only person who finds the idea of being tracked 24/7 by a sensor to be a bit creepy. But it does seem obvious that biosensors and wearables are going to play in an important role in healthcare going forward, possibly a much more central role than we had anticipated. It's a fascinating space, but I believe much more will happen there in the next year alone. Keep your eyes peeled.