Smartwatches can easily save lives and are an invaluable product category that more people should rely on, according to a medical professional interviewed by WXMI. Dr. Gregory Michaud, a Vanderbilt University Medical Center-based cardiologist, argues that having a device that constantly monitors your heart rate and warns you in case of any irregularities can save your life by detecting symptoms of life-threatening incidents such as strokes before they manifest themselves. The medical professional believes the healthcare industry will be placing a much larger focus on wearables moving forward, especially in the context of treating and monitoring at-risk patients.
Dr. Michaud believes that observing one’s well-being with a smartphone and a smartwatch is also the least invasive method of doing so and consequently the one that patients are most likely to accept, especially given how everyone already uses contemporary handsets and a watch isn’t anything out of the ordinary. A week ago, authorities were looking for a missing Fort Campbell soldier JuWan Richardson on Kentucky Lake using a wide variety of means, including the GPS capabilities of a Fitbit bracelet he’s believed to have been wearing. The man’s body was discovered Monday, though it’s presently unclear whether it was located through that attempt to ping his wearable, with details about the case remaining undisclosed but the episode underlining another potential application of such devices, even though technology failed to save a life in this instance.
The smartwatch segment is still in its infancy but continues to grow at a steady rate, with recent estimates predicting the wearable industry as a whole to be worth some $45 billion annually by 2022. Unlike smartphones, smartwatches don’t appear to be shaping into a category that warrants frequent upgrades, as evidenced by Qualcomm that appears to be content with releasing a new smartwatch SoC every two to three years instead of following up on it annually like it does in the handset segment. The company’s next silicon is said to be called the Snapdragon Wear 3100 and has already been confirmed for a fall launch.