One of the hottest topics at the recently concluded M-Enabling Summit outside of Washington, DC was wearables – all of this great new technology that 
one way or another attaches to our bodies. The Summit focuses on new mobile technologies to help seniors and the disabled, but a lot of it covers mainstream devices as well. In the decade since the advent of wrist worn activity trackers, tens of millions have been sold. Fitbit alone has sold more than 20 million devices. Yet according to The Future Health Index www.futurehealthindex.
within six months. Activity trackers have been the first wave. They are part of the “quantified self” movement to track how we walk, sleep, stand, run, and eat. Most of that data is shared with our smartphones and little else.
The first wave also measures things like blood oxygen levels, heart rate, and blood pressure. And that brings us to the second wave, devices that not only measure, but diagnose our conditions. Examples: Dexcom makes a continuous blood glucose monitor that uses tiny probes that barely penetrate the skin, unlike traditional glucometers that require a drop of blood. 
AliveCor’s Kardia device teams up with your smartphone or smartwatch to measure and diagnose heart irregularities. It generates actionable information that you can send directly to your cardiologist or to an emergency room.
An implantable monitor the size of a paper clip from Medtronics can be inserted into the heart with a minimally invasive procedure and will report on any irregularities.
New fabrics embedded with sensors from companies like Sensoria and BeBop are also promising, allowing measurement and diagnostics without 
any inconvenience – a shirt that measures your heart rate and respiration; socks that measure your gait and sense the kind of pressure that can cause diabetic foot ulcers. Sensoria is partnering with Orthotic Holdings Inc. on a device that can predict a likely fall. Sensoria has also announced plans for sensor embedded shirts and sports bras that can send an alert if it senses a possible cardiac episode. A personal emergency response system from Philips, the GoSafe, can help predict if a near term event, such as a stroke, may occur that will require emergency transportation.
Beyond devices that quantify and diagnose are perhaps the most exciting wearables, those that are therapeutic. In some cases there are new 
technologies coupled with old solutions. For example, your eyeglasses are therapeutic, as are hearing aids. But new vision enhancement devices from OrCam will allow someone with low vision to “read” menus, signs, books, and even recognize faces with a combination of optical character recognition, machine vision, and artificial intelligence and provide you with the information in your ears. New hearing aids from ReSound and Signia will allow you to answer calls from your smartphone, or even get a direct input from the microphones worn by actors in a Broadway show. But these technologies don’t come cheap. The OrCam system costs between $2500 and $3500 and includes several hours of hands on one to one training. Top end FDA-approved hearing aids require a fitting by an audiologist and can run between $1800 and $6000, and they are generally not covered by insurance.
High tech fabrics from companies like Opedix and EnerSkin can behave like compression wraps to help heal injuries and prevent weekend warriors 
from damaging untrained muscles. The logical extension of this comes in the form of the SuitX exoskeleton that will help a paraplegic to walk, and eventually could be something a senior could slip into to help get around or lift heavy objects.
But if you think what’s here now is impressive, as the folks say, “you ain’t seen nothing yet.” The combination of 3D printing and stem cell research 
holds the promise of letting us create our own custom spare parts. A Brooklyn-based company called EpiBone is already growing replacement bones, or parts of them, in the lab to replace things like wrist or ankle bones. Eventually, scientists will be able to use these technologies to create kidneys, livers, and even hearts from our own cells so there will be no concerns over organ rejection. But, alas, many of these breakthroughs could be anywhere from a decade to generations away. But even today, the devices already on the market will allow us to keep better track of our own conditions and share that information with those who care for us, hopefully enabling us to live safer, longer, and healthier lives.
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