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Wearable Health Monitors - Patches

Now that fitness watches and armbands and other devices are commonplace, there is more progress on the development of medical grade devices which are smaller, less obtrusive and collect still more detailed information. Patches like The Holst Centers’ next generation patch (information here)  is equipped with multiple sensing capabilities. It incorporates an accelerometer to monitor physical activity, ECG technology to record cardiac electrical activity, and is also able to track body temperature, respiratory rate, and body composition. So too should Vital Patch from Vital Connect (information here).

These products promise to increase the health care data collected by both organizations and patients, since it will push patient monitoring to the outpatient setting. These devices can provide continuous outpatient data of a size, scope and resolution that will be well suited to big data techniques (machine learning, etc). Here’s a look at how it can be used. The hardest questions organizations will have to ask is how to best utilize the data and how to get those efforts to cut across organizations?

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