Technology has played a pivotal role in revolutionizing healthcare. Nowadays, we have devices that can monitor your health while offering tips on improving your fitness levels. Developers use artificial intelligence and IoT to make disease diagnosis and monitoring more efficient.
Real-Time Health Monitoring 101:
These devices and apps leverage modern technology to optimize the delivery of healthcare services. A clear example is using fitness watches that measure your heartbeat during active and resting hours. The watch then uses the data to track and provide progress on your fitness journey.
Health monitoring devices are also popular in sports science, where every metric matters when boosting performance levels in elite athletes. An example is glucose monitors to track glucose levels, energy balance, and recovery endurance in elite athletes.
But how is this technology revolutionizing the healthcare sector?
Bettering Healthcare Delivery:
Patients had to visit a doctor’s office for simple procedures like measuring blood glucose and pressure. However, the development of devices such as fitness trackers and continuous glucose monitors allows people to monitor some of their vitals without visiting a doctor.
According to a case study done by Empeek, real-time health monitoring devices have sensors, a user interface, and internet connectivity, allowing people to share the data with doctors and other healthcare providers, for example nutritionists. Diagnoses, healthcare, and diet plans can also be curated in advance using the patients’ data.
Patients Play a More Active Role:
Medicine is evolving, and people are becoming more aware of how their daily habits can affect their health. Many people are taking the initiative by living a healthier lifestyle, from what they eat to staying physically active.
Real-time health monitoring puts the power of healthcare into the hands of individuals. For example, investing in a fitness watch lets you track your health metrics in real-time. You can track vitals such as your heartbeat and blood sugar levels during and after workouts. The apps also provide a breakdown of the data on your fitness journey.
These apps also facilitate preventive healthcare strategies, helping doctors detect diseases early. This approach improves outcomes while eliminating expenses associated with treatment later.
Remote Healthcare Services:
Daily trips to the doctor can be tiring, especially for people who live far from cities or travel often. Custom-made real-time health monitoring devices come with a patient monitoring service. This feature, available as a user interface complete with graphs and charts, allows doctors to keep track of their patients’ health status remotely.
It is a crucial service for the elderly and people suffering from chronic diseases who need regular medical checkups.
Collecting and managing patient data isn’t easy. Real-time health monitoring reduces some of the workload related to data management. Some devices can be integrated with existing systems. Both systems work towards syncing, cleaning, and analyzing data automatically.
What Are the Shortcomings?
But as is with any new technology, a few challenges come with real-time health monitoring services and devices.
The number one issue is data safety and privacy. Most fitness tracking devices aren’t compliant with HIPAA regulations. As a result, some of the data collected ends up in the wrong hands, compromising patient privacy.
There have been complaints that some wearables don’t collect accurate data. This can lead to inaccuracies and wrong diagnoses. Research is ongoing to create more accurate fitness trackers, but as they say, data cannot be relied on 100%.
Bottom Line:
Real-time health monitoring tech is still in its early stages, but the signs are promising. Already, there are discussions to include IoT and AI to make fitness devices more efficient. This will give people more insights into their health, including tips on how they can diagnose and manage issues related to their fitness.
However, ensure that you read reviews and do extensive research before investing in a health monitoring device. Not all devices are the same, and some brands have many negative reviews for building fitness watches that cannot track your heart rate and the number of steps well.
As these technologies evolve and become more sophisticated, the possibilities for improving health outcomes and enhancing patient experiences are endless. Remember, privacy and data security are real issues. While you search for quality fitness and real-time health monitoring apps and wearables, look into their T&Cs and how your data will be used.
Nirmal Sarkar is a Biotechnologist from the city of Joy, Kolkata. He is the founder of this blog and covers a wide range of topics from Gadgets to Software to Latest Offers. You can get in touch with him via nirmal@hitricks.com
