Wearable Medical Devices

Healthcare organizations’ staff can monitor patient health state in real time with personal health monitoring devices and use the gathered information to timely adjust the disease management plan. Patients can track their health parameters and request consultations if the solution indicates alarming patterns in vitals.

Device examples: wearable spirometer, hemodynamic/pressure monitoring devices, ECG patches, etc.

How software for medical wearables works: Wearable patient monitoring devices (e.g., glucose monitors) collect data related to a patient’s condition (e.g., a blood glucose level) and transfer it to the medical software cloud server. The anonymized patient data is processed and analyzed to identify patterns in it. The identified patterns accompanied by the source data are available to doctors and patients in respective user applications and help track patient health conditions, improve treatment, and promote disease self-management.

Use cases ScienceSoft suggests:

• Respiratory monitoring for patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, asthma, etc.
• Monitoring of blood glucose for patients with diabetes type 1 and type 2.
• Monitoring of cardiac diseases.
• Fetal and neonatal monitoring.
• Monitoring of COVID-19 patients (e.g., using body temperature and blood oxygenation level monitoring devices combined with telehealth software).
• Patient monitoring during cancer treatment (e.g., blood pressure, heart rate).
• Home care for geriatric patients.
• Measurement and recording of dyskinetic symptoms and tremors by patients with neurological disorders.

Medical wearables help treat chronic disease symptoms (e.g., pain, hyperglycemia) and maintain patients’ health, while automatically accumulating data on wearable-enabled therapy delivery for a doctor’s review.

Device examples: implanted pacemakers, defibrillators, closed-loop pancreas systems, insulin pumps, etc.

How software for medical wearables works: Wearable patient therapy devices can be either implanted (e.g., implantable cardioverter-defibrillators) or attached to the skin (e.g., insulin pumps). Therapy delivery can be triggered by a patient via the user application or automatically by the solution (if, based on patient data analysis, it identifies the need for treatment). Reports with therapy data and insights on the device state are available in the medical staff app.

Use cases ScienceSoft suggests:

• Cardiac rhythm management.
• Insulin therapy for diabetes patients and insulin intake monitoring.
• IoT-based tracking of medical devices’ condition.
• Pain management via electrotherapy devices stimulating nerves or muscles (e.g., for migraine alleviation, muscle spasms).
• Posture correction using wearable devices that emit vibrations to help promote healthy behaviors.

Wearables for patient rehabilitation can enable physical therapy delivery and collect data on at-home or hospital-based rehabilitation progress. The key advantage is that the wearables allow the medical staff to precisely capture the way patients perform physiotherapy exercises, monitor rehabilitation efficiency and patients’ vitals during the exercises.

Device examples: smart gloves, range-of-motion assessment sensors, body temperature and respiration sensors, EMG sensors, etc.

How software for medical wearables works: The patient health state data is collected by devices’ sensors that read and quantify patients’ movements, assess vitals (e.g., heart rate) during a rehabilitation session. Cloud software stores and analyzes data transferred by rehabilitation wearables. The data interpreted by software is shown in the app for physical therapists to help them assess patients’ improvements, rehabilitation efficiency, and adjust the therapy.

Use cases ScienceSoft suggests:

• Stroke rehabilitation (e.g., using smart gloves to regain movement through repeated hand and arm movements).
• Monitoring of joint movement improvement (e.g., after bone fractures, joint surgeries).
• Cardiac monitoring for patients recovering after heart surgeries or acute conditions (e.g., a heart attack).
• Home care for patients with chronic diseases (e.g., neurological, cardiac diseases).
• Electromyography monitoring of nervous and muscle response during rehabilitation.

Wearable diagnostics devices can identify intermittent symptoms (e.g., heart palpitations) that could have been not present during doctor appointments. When a patient has such infrequent symptoms, a doctor prescribes continuous monitoring with wearables (often for 1-2 weeks). These devices enable fact-based disease diagnosing and help improve patient outcomes.

Device examples: skin temperature, perspiration sensors, heart rate monitors, glucose monitors, holter monitors, etc.

How software for medical wearables works: The cloud server gets patient health data from devices that monitor the patient’s vitals in real time for analysis. Based on pre-set parameters, the solution spots abrupt changes in patient vitals and displays a report on identified abnormalities in the doctor’s app. The comprehensive data allows doctors to timely confirm patients’ diagnoses and plan treatment.

Use cases ScienceSoft suggests:

• Diagnostics of cardiac conditions and developing pathologies like atrial fibrillation.
• Monitoring of patients with prediabetes.
• As a part of complex diagnostics of neurological conditions (e.g., Parkinson’s disease).
• Blood coagulation monitoring to prevent ischemic stroke.

Physical activity tracking wearables aim to maintain patient health and improve the quality of life. Wearables enable a continuous analysis of the quantity and quality of physical activity and help patients introduce well-informed lifestyle change decisions.

Device examples: wearable activity trackers, smart watches, skin temperature sensors, perspiration sensors, etc.

How software for medical wearables works: Software collects data from wearable devices that track patients’ physical activity like steps, energy consumption, physical activity time, quality of physical activity (e.g., moderate or vigorous activity). The analyzed data is displayed to a patient for self-monitoring and is available for a doctor as an activity report (featuring average daily activity, number of days meeting a pre-set physical activity threshold, etc.). During appointments or health check-ups, the doctor uses the activity insights together with other health metrics (e.g., lab tests, medical device data) to offer recommendations on health state improvement.

Use cases ScienceSoft suggests:

• Physical activity tracking among populations (especially geriatric patients, people leading a sedentary lifestyle, etc.).
• Monitoring of physical activity for patients with cardiovascular diseases.
• Activity tracking for cancer patients (e.g., those receiving chemotherapy) to evaluate their health state and predict chemotherapy complications.
• Tracking of physical activity among patients with rheumatic diseases (e.g., juvenile idiopathic arthritis).
• Activity monitoring for patients who underwent bariatric surgery.