Sunday, September 8, 2013

Impact of wearable tech in heatlh care industry


The wearable technology trend is beginning to take off and two big health organizations want to make sure that they’re not left behind.  In june, 2013, health technology company Qualcomm Life and California health system Palomar Health announced the creation of an incubator for exploring the applications of wearable computing in medicine.

Called Glassomics, the joint program, first reported by MedCityNews, will look at both clinical and consumer applications of health-related wearable technology. Although the name is clearly a nod to Google Glass, it sounds like the incubator won’t limit itself to Google devices.

In a statement, the companies said Glassomics is intended to encourage industry partnerships in research and development efforts and would encompass a range of uses, from patient data monitoring to augmented reality-enhanced clinical applications to genomic information mapping and visualization. The incubator will be housed at Palomar and will make use of Qualcomm Life’s 2net platform, which is the company’s universally-interoperable network for collecting and sharing biometric data from connected health devices.


As Google Glass hype has escalated, many have started pointing out the device’s many potential applications in healthcare, from making surgery more efficient to improving how doctors use and collect data in electronic health records to enabling better telemedicine. But, at this point, not much has actually been demonstrated. Glassonomics could play an early role in testing the limits of Google Glass and wearable technology in the medical arena and showing where opportunities and challenges may lie.


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