Rethinking Power Solutions for Healthcare Wearables: From Point‐of‐Care and Episodic use to Continuous Monitoring and Therapeutic Platforms

Wearable technologies hold great promises to transform healthcare through continuous physiological monitoring, personalized diagnostics, and real‐time therapeutic interventions. Yet their translation into meaningful clinical practice remains critically constrained by one of the most persistent and overlooked barriers: power. While sensing, materials, and integration strategies have advanced rapidly, most healthcare wearables continue to rely on uniform commercial batteries that are fundamentally misaligned with diverse clinical demands. This reliance creates a bottleneck, widening the gap between proof‐of‐concept demonstrations and reliable patient‐centered solutions. This Perspective introduces a framework that categorizes wearable healthcare systems into four groups—disposable point‐of‐care diagnostics, episodic monitoring, continuous long‐term monitoring, and therapeutic or intervention platforms—highlighting how each category carries distinct operational horizons, material requirements, and power needs. By aligning power strategies with these specific demands, opportunities emerge to shift from wasteful, rigid, and short‐sighted battery dependence toward solutions that emphasize autonomy, sustainability, and clinical relevance. Approaches ranging from wireless power transfer to biofuel cells are examined as category‐specific opportunities to achieve robust functionality. This categorization establishes a roadmap for rethinking power in healthcare wearables, guiding the design of energy strategies that can enable the reliable, scalable, and transformative deployment of next‐generation wearable systems.

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Publication Details

Journal
Advanced Energy and Sustainability Research
Published
2025-11-24
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1002/aesr.202500352
Primary Topic
Advanced Sensor and Energy Harvesting Materials
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00
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article

Rethinking Power Solutions for Healthcare Wearables: From Point‐of‐Care and Episodic use to Continuous Monitoring and Therapeutic Platforms

Seokheun Choi
Advanced Energy and Sustainability Research
Advanced Sensor and Energy Harvesting Materials
article

Rethinking Power Solutions for Healthcare Wearables: From Point‐of‐Care and Episodic use to Continuous Monitoring and Therapeutic Platforms

Seokheun Choi
article en

Abstract

Wearable technologies hold great promises to transform healthcare through continuous physiological monitoring, personalized diagnostics, and real‐time therapeutic interventions. Yet their translation into meaningful clinical practice remains critically constrained by one of the most persistent and overlooked barriers: power. While sensing, materials, and integration strategies have advanced rapidly, most healthcare wearables continue to rely on uniform commercial batteries that are fundamentally misaligned with diverse clinical demands. This reliance creates a bottleneck, widening the gap between proof‐of‐concept demonstrations and reliable patient‐centered solutions. This Perspective introduces a framework that categorizes wearable healthcare systems into four groups—disposable point‐of‐care diagnostics, episodic monitoring, continuous long‐term monitoring, and therapeutic or intervention platforms—highlighting how each category carries distinct operational horizons, material requirements, and power needs. By aligning power strategies with these specific demands, opportunities emerge to shift from wasteful, rigid, and short‐sighted battery dependence toward solutions that emphasize autonomy, sustainability, and clinical relevance. Approaches ranging from wireless power transfer to biofuel cells are examined as category‐specific opportunities to achieve robust functionality. This categorization establishes a roadmap for rethinking power in healthcare wearables, guiding the design of energy strategies that can enable the reliable, scalable, and transformative deployment of next‐generation wearable systems.

Advanced Energy and Sustainability ResearchVol. 7(3)
Binghamton University (US)
Openalex Percentile: Top 65%
Advanced Sensor and Energy Harvesting Materials
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