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We bring you the second part of the different uses of wearables applied to health, industry and security.

Health

The wearables devices related to health are the most leading and have more updates, they have a great potential beyond the activity trackers. Thus, they solve a large number of problems, from contact lenses to control diabetes, insulin pumps, diagnostic systems at home or vests for resuscitation. These devices not only help medical personnel, but also allow patients to have better control and quality of life, offering continuous information of their constant and different states.

The types of devices being used in this sector are:

• Health monitors: control physiological data of patients, facilitating interventions.
• Security monitors: they allow to detect falls, epileptic attacks and heart attacks, sending alarm signals to caregivers and emergency teams.
• Rehabilitation systems: systems with augmented or virtual reality, which facilitate rehabilitation at home for physiotherapy, patients with heart disease and elderly people.
• Treatment efficacy monitors: these are systems that monitor the effectiveness of treatments and the results of clinical trials to evaluate them better. So that the physiological changes of the chronic conditions can be traced, as well as the progress of the treatments.
• Early detection monitors: used for the early detection of symptoms and adverse changes in the patient’s health status, facilitating timely medical interventions.

What can these devices measure? Among other things:

• Strides, distance, steps, cadence, speed, intensity of activity, calories burned.
• Heart and respiratory rate, skin temperature and humidity.
• Quality and patterns of sleep.
• Brain waves to control devices.
• Sun exposure (UV).

Some of these devices allow to control for long periods of time different variables, and at all times to keep the data related to the patient and its symptoms, so possible diseases or medical problems can be detected much earlier.

The fundamental advantage is that the patient and the staff will have greater control over the symptoms and the disease. In addition, it will allow researchers to have a large amount of data to work and improve research.

All this will reduce the final costs of treatment, since there will be new systems for measuring and controlling diseases.

Industrial

From helmets to exoskeletons to work, the world of wearables applied to industry has the purpose of improving, facilitating and optimizing the work that is done in it. These devices can be used in warehouses, production plants or the field.

On the one hand, they offer information and help the worker to find errors, improve performance and, ultimately, productivity. On the other, they reinforce the worker’s safety against traditional devices (lighter, sturdier, protective, optimized, resistant to chemicals, etc.).

All this allows to improve the maintenance, the quality, the inspections, the follow-up of activities, the collaboration between workers / work teams (for example, through remote meetings), the reception of instructions and documentation without hands, etc.

The most common types of devices applied to the industry are:

• Glasses for reading bar codes, identification of errors in industrial finishes, biometric monitoring to solve leakage errors, physical problems in structures, etc.
• Camera tracking systems that allow controlling the movements of a user (for example, a surgeon)
• Wrist computers, for stock control, reception of information in small places, etc.

Security

This is the sector that makes the most investment in the incorporation of wearable technology systems. In general, the devices are developed for the military field and then they are taken to other fields such as the health, as is the case of the resuscitation vest, created for soldiers in combat so that, if they have a cardiac problem could receive resuscitation discharges while medical assistance arrives.

The characteristics of military devices are that they always try to be small, they are a combination of all the previous areas, and the advances are not usually known immediately for security reasons.

Regarding its uses, wearable technology, taking advantage of augmented reality, could mean a change in the way of monitoring and controlling collective security. For example, using smart glasses with augmented reality, greater control could be maintained by the security bodies.