Industry perspective: Wearable electronic devices for remote patient monitoring

Wearable electronic medical devices have the potential to revolutionize our healthcare systems by enabling continuous, real-time monitoring outside traditional clinical environments. These technologies, which may be integrated with artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things (IoT), can influence chronic disease management, early detection, and personalized care. Advances in miniaturized sensing, low-power electronics, wireless connectivity, and data analytics have made it possible to gather clinically meaningful data unobtrusively over extended periods. However, challenges remain to translate this potential into medically approved and clinically useful products, including validating accuracy with users out in the real world, developing frameworks for regulatory approval, and interfacing with existing clinical systems. This Industry Perspective examines the state of the wearables industry and the gap that lies between technology development of medical wearables for remote patient monitoring (RPM) and approved, market ready products. It concludes that RPM is likely to continue to be an area of significant growth, first by leveraging existing technologies from the consumer industry, and then as more novel technologies are able to progress through the translational gap into commercially viable and approved products.