The adoption of wearables to monitor health status was increasing pre-COVID-19 and the pandemic has been a massive catalyst for a greater shift in this direction.
Polar has seen this reflected in the volume of sales of devices and – importantly – in the data our users have been activating.
We’ve worked for years with pro athletes, coaches and scientists in the area of rest and recovery. This work has focused on optimising athletic performance.
It turns out that the data sets for these elite performers are identical to the data sets that can benefit the general consumer in terms of health maintenance.
Here’s an example of what is possible today with Polar devices. While you sleep, your device can monitor your resting heart rate (HR), heart rate variation (HRV) and respiration rate. You can compare each night’s numbers to your normal baseline. Is your HR lower or higher than normal? How about your HRV and respiration rate?
If you experience four or five days of truly bad numbers, this will be a strong indication that something is amiss. Perhaps it’s just a super-charged work schedule, too much caffeine and alcohol, or too much travelling. Or perhaps the root cause is that you’re incubating an illness that has yet to emerge. Either way, you can see that you need to take extra care of yourself.
At the government level, this is a key opportunity for controlling future pandemics.
I’m strongly optimistic that wearables are increasingly going
to be key tools in health, wellness and disease management
If large populations self-monitored and the system flagged deteriorating individuals before they became symptomatic, infected individuals could be tested, receive care and be quarantined before they unwittingly spread the contagion. Similarly, for frontline health workers, early identification of asymptomatic personnel could get them out of the rotation and into care early. This is exactly what Elysian Labs is doing, in partnership with Polar, for the US Army.
Today, we can measure HR, HRV, respiration rate, blood oxygenation and core temperature from commonly available devices. Add blood pressure to that mix and you have a powerful suite of biometrics. The data piece is relatively easy. The big question is how to properly interpret that data. What does a given data set mean for a single individual? How specific and bespoke can that guidance be?
Time will tell of course, but I’m strongly optimistic that wearables are increasingly going to be key tools in health, wellness and disease management.