I've been reading a bit about the potential for smart watches to monitor heart rates and possibly detect issues before they become a problem, and was wondering what other consumer level devices would be useful for older people to have around to house for health/medical purposes?
Blood pressure, blood sugar, heart rate, sleep patterns etc? The tech is nearly at a point where were you could almost auto diagnose a few things, or at least trigger a warning when a visit to the doctor might be a good idea.
Is anyone using these things and are they at a level that is useful? You always hear the odd story of some healthy person who just dropped dead with no symptoms and I wonder when the tech will be available for us to pick up on symptoms we never knew we had.
IMO the biggest issue companies are finding creating a "health monitoring product" is the legalities behind it are huge and change across countries. Samsung Ativ Watch 2 for example can measure both ECG and Blood Pressure (on command) over a year ago now I think, and yet its taken this long only to get it approved in Korea and i think the US. Apparently this is also a big reason why they've dropped SPO2 measurements from mobile and likely why Fitbit SPO2 only gives a weak based "oxygen saturation difference" and won't give an actual reading except for specific devices.
Still though I personally love the tech, my activ watch 2 will give me a beep every hour if I don't stand up which has made me stretch and stand up more (even lets you do a stretch then and there and counts it). I like that I can see my activity as well to see how I'm going through the week, and it alerts me when I'm stressed/large jump in heart rate.
The ECG and blood pressure stuff is good, I find myself checking it regularly instead of never, which for many people could help them figure out they have an issue much earlier on, especially for those that do not go to the doctors office often. Sleep pattern has been useful for me as well, I thought that I had sleeping problems, but from testing I've found out I actually don't sleep often enough which is why I'm tired.
My bigger issue is privacy though, I have no idea where my health data is being used or shared or could be used somewhere. Wouldn't be surprised if my walking data for example is shared by some government agency or something for some reason.
Still though, I can see some huge positives for people to be able to understand their own health, I wouldn't be surprised if it makes people more conscious of it, which may make some positive changes in their life.