Smartwatches could soon benefit overstretched health practitioners and their patients, says Business School researcher Ruhi Bajaj, lead author of a preliminary study exploring the potential role of such devices in health care.
Integrating smartwatch data into clinical care and electronic medical records could provide a more comprehensive view of a person’s health and complement routine clinical data. This may lead to better patient or client engagement in self-care and increased health care efficiency by automating some diagnostic processes, says Ruhi.
However, concerns around the interpretation of smartwatch data analysis and the corresponding potential increase in workload are barriers to integrating smartwatch data into workflows.
As such, Ruhi’s study aimed to co-design, develop and evaluate a prototype of a health monitoring tool using smartwatch data analytics to assist health care professionals with clinical decision-making. The study is published in the March 2023 edition of Future Internet