Wearable technology is a novelty. Soon it will become a necessity. Consumers are embracing activity-tracking wristbands, which tell wearers how many steps they took or hours they slept. More than three million were sold in the United States alone in the year to last March. Developers like Jawbone and Fitbit collect the information and use it to offer motivational tips and advice on better lifestyle choices.
But in the not-too-distant future, the ability to gather personal data in real time will be vital for critical health services and products. Health insurers may be early adopters. Discovery, a South African financial services company whose partners include insurers AIA and Prudential, already offers pioneering policies that mine data from wearable technology. Sporty customers can earn discounts of as much as 15 percent on their health insurance premiums.
It's an appealing strategy: 70 percent of consumers surveyed by PricewaterhouseCoopers said they would wear a device to reduce payments. This is just the beginning. Applications will become more practical as both hardware and software develop. Devices that measure temperature and blood chemistry could allow doctors to monitor patients from afar.
For victims of chronic illness, that could be life-saving, or at least life-changing. Think of diabetics, who could ditch daily blood tests for smart contact lenses that constantly monitor their glucose levels. Google is currently developing prototypes. Admittedly, there could be some side effects. As soon as technology is capable of gathering truly intimate biometric data, that information becomes vulnerable to theft or misuse.
Will the insurance industry refuse coverage to potentially unhealthy clients? Technology developers can only use personal data with express permission from the consumer. But if most healthy people are happy to share their data, those who opt out may be conspicuous. These are big questions, but not big enough to stall the technology's rise. Research group International Data Corporation says sales of wearable tech trebled in 2014 from a year earlier - and the market could increase more than five-fold to over 100 million units by 2018. These gadgets are fast becoming too useful to ignore.
Shipments of wearable devices will top 19 million units globally in 2014, more than three times last year's sales, according to research by International Data Corporation. The global market could increase to 111.9 million units in 2018, according to the report.
Around 20 percent of US consumers own a wearable device, according to research by PricewaterhouseCoopers. It said 3.3 million fitness trackers were sold in the US in the year ending March 2014. As many as 70 percent of consumers say they would use wearable devices if they were provided by their employer in exchange for a discount on insurance premiums, according to the research.
Comments
Comments are closed.