Like Internet enabled home appliances, wearable computing captured the imagination of both the media and the public. Even so, for some time this enthusiasm failed to translate into commercially successful products. Recently however, a number of companies have started to market garments that monitor the breathing, temperature and heart rate of athletes and keep fit enthusiasts. Now some healthcare providers have identified a potential role for wearable computers in remote patient monitoring applications. While we are a long way from the Utopian situation where clothing continually monitors our health, we are seeing a growing number of applications for ehealth enabled wearable computers, or ‘healthware’ in telemedicine and clinical trials.
In this report we make a business case for wearable computing in ehealth, and explain the role of IT vendors, garment manufacturers, communications companies and healthcare providers in this market. These players range from companies seeking to diversify into new and less competitive markets, to new entrants to the healthcare sector hoping to build services requiring the minimum of manual intervention. A market will exist for front end and back office software to collect and analyse vital signs data. The data networks of mobile operators will provide an ideal platform for the ‘always on’ connections needed to transfer data from patients to monitoring centres. Software and devices will be needed to provide middleware between garments and mobile networks – this could include a new generation of handsets and PDA applications to carry out pre-processing and transmission of patient data.
Read full report