Well beyond the direct to consumer market, a new report from Tractica notes that the appetite for enterprise wearable devices is heating up. It projects that the market for these wearables will grow to $31 billion by 2021. That’s a compound annual growth rate of more than 120 percent compared with $267 million last year.
The report highlights 30 corporations that are enlisting wearables to address everything from medical education to assessing driver fatigue. It’s the second edition of the white paper and it notes a shift from companies that experimented with Google Glass to a more diversified set of wearables spanning smart watches, medical body sensors, virtual reality headsets, smart helmets, and location trackers. Here are five that look especially interesting.
Audi and BMW are using a “chairless chair” for their manufacturing line employees in an effort to reduce workplace injuries by cutting down on stress on leg muscles and joints from standing too long in awkward positions. It’s a bit of a departure from the standing desks trend, supported by reports suggesting that sitting all day is as hazardous as smoking. But considering the awkward positions these production people have to position themselves, it seems like a useful approach. It’s also intended to be used in short durations. The chair is designed to be strapped onto the user’s body. They press a button when they want to sit and “a variable damper” holds the body weight. The user’s weight is shifted directed to the shoe heels, so the chair doesn’t touch the ground directly.
Behavioral Health, Interoperability and eConsent: Meeting the Demands of CMS Final Rule Compliance
In a webinar on April 16 at 1pm ET, Aneesh Chopra will moderate a discussion with executives from DocuSign, Velatura, and behavioral health providers on eConsent, health information exchange and compliance with the CMS Final Rule on interoperability.
Vitality, part of the finance business Discover group, enabled members to get an Apple Watch by being more active. Members could purchase Apple Watches with their Discovery card and and offset payments if they met their monthly activity goals. Previously available in South Africa, Vitality launched the program in the U.S. this year through AmGen Inc., DaVita Healthcare Partners, and Lockton companies.
Oschner Health, a Louisiana-based nonprofit provider, is piloting Apple Watch for remote patient monitoring for patients with chronic diseases such as hypertension. The study allows specialized pharmacists to make drug adjustments if needed or suggest lifestyle recommendations. Patients also have access to their data through its MyOschner portal. They can use Oschner’s AppleWatch app to receive medication reminders, including images of the pill, feedback from clinicians about potential side effects, and renewal notifications for prescriptions, along with exercise reminders. Oschner was one of the first to integrate its EHR with Apple HealthKit. Patients on the platform can use it to submit data to Oschner’s EHR system.
Yale-New Haven Hospital System endocrinologist Dr. Adam Mayerson prescribes wearable glucose monitors and insulin pumps to his diabetes patients. They measure blood-insulin levels every five minutes and alerts users when insulin levels rise or fall. Physicians can view three months of data to assess patient’s insulin trends. That data has enabled Dr. Mayerson reduce or eliminate having to wait for blood test results.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
Photo: Tractica
