Health & fitness is often touted as being one of the most promising segments of wearable devices. Evolved from the humble pedometer, these now boast an impressive range of sensors, capable of monitoring heart rate, stress levels, sweat, quality of sleep as well as physical activity to quantify in great detail every waking (and sleeping moment), creating a true ‘datafication’ of the self . Two of the most advanced proponents of this class of solution are the Jawbone Up3 and the Microsoft Band, both recently announced, which upload the data collected by the device to the cloud to carry out analysis and provide insight, guidance and, where necessary, motivation.
These services represent the state of the art in the consumer ‘digital health’ space. Definitely interesting, and a useful tool in the fight against obesity, but hardly game-changing in as far as healthcare provision goes, and well short of any serious medical diagnosis. However, this week we got a glimpse of what the future might hold, in the shape of this year’s winner of the Nokia sensing XChallenge. A team at the DNA Medical Institute has produced a single handheld device that can uses nanotechnology to analyse a single drop of blood for hundreds of diseases and conditions, in addition to measuring continuous vitals such as hearth activity and body temperature. This solution, called rHealth, will be available in variants for use by medical professionals as well as a more compact one, called the X1, for use by consumers. While there is no word yet on prices and commercialisation dates, it is clear that making this sort of diagnostic information available directly to consumers is likely to trigger seismic changes to the relationship between patients and medical practitioners, comparable to the way as the Internet has revolutionised all other aspects of information collection.