Predicting Health Crises With Wearable Devices: The Future of Senior Care?

In the next 5 to 10 years, about 50% of people over 55 will use wearable devices that forecast life-threatening health risks. Imagine devices that not only measure vitals (as they already do) but also apply advanced machine learning algorithms to spot early warning signs of fatal conditions, such as heart attacks and strokes. While they won’t replace a doctor’s diagnosis, the potential to save lives is immense.

ScienceSoft’s research team assessed the potential for market penetration and adoption of such devices and is sharing an optimistic outlook supported by the growing popularity of wearables and healthcare technology advancements.

The Rise of Wearables: Meeting the Health Needs of Older Americans

Seniors, like everyone else, depend on in-person medical exams to catch any alarming health trends. However, they often face barriers such as mobility issues, sensory impairments, and the daunting costs of regular medical visits. This is where wearables can offer a simpler and more convenient way of health monitoring. While they have been here for quite some time, we believe their potential has yet to be revealed.

Over the past decade, the popularity of wearables has surged. And though seniors may be adopting this technology at a slower pace than younger population, the interest is growing. In 2023, approximately 30% of Americans aged 55–65 embraced wearables, while the adoption among those over 65 reached 19–25%.

As for now, the perceived complexity of using wearables (often exaggerated by a simple fear of the unknown), subpar user experience, and concerns about physical harm (like radiation) prevent faster wearable adoption among seniors. But we believe that these barriers are easy to overcome. If wearable manufacturers focus on addressing these concerns and effectively communicate the benefits of wearables to seniors and their family members, adoption can go faster in this demographic group.

Recent studies highlight the potential of wearables in tracking vital signs with remarkable accuracy. For example, Stanford researchers found that data from smartwatches worn by volunteers for over three years correlated with health parameters measured at a doctor’s office.

What’s more, wearables are affordable, making them a perfect choice for people on fixed income.

Will Seniors Trust Wearables Beyond Basic Monitoring?

Simple health and fitness monitoring is not enough to drive preventive care. Wearables must be able to recognize alarming health trends with high precision. Can they achieve this? And, if they can, will seniors trust these devices enough to seek medical advice based on their predictions?

The use of AI in today’s wearables

Wearables are already equipped with low-key AI to transform users’ data into health recommendations. Our comparative analysis of three smart wearable gadgets – Apple Watch, Oura Ring, and Fitbit – showed that these devices excel at recognizing lifestyle patterns and offering personalized recommendations promoting healthier living and active aging. Notably, Apple Watch stands out with features beneficial for the older population. Its latest model has a fall detection mechanism and can perform electrocardiograms, identifying potential signs of atrial fibrillation.

Machine learning: a new say in geriatric disease diagnosis

As predictive algorithms become increasingly advanced, we can anticipate that wearables will follow Apple Watch’s lead and expand their diagnostic capabilities. Exciting developments are already underway.

Understanding that healthcare can and should benefit from technology advancements, groups of researchers across the world attempt to train machine learning algorithms to diagnose and manage the treatment of geriatric diseases. The results are promising, though the prediction accuracy varies notably across diseases.

Predicting Life-Threatening Events. Is It Possible at All?

There are indeed early warning signs indicating the risk of developing fatal conditions.

Clinical trials have found a correlation between a faster heart rate and adverse cardiovascular events, whose incidence increases with age: from about 40% for people aged 40–59 years to 75% for those of 60–79 years, and 86% for the age group above 80 years. Two large-scale studies – one with over 5,000 participants and another with nearly 25,000 – confirmed the hypothesis that cardiovascular mortality increased progressively with resting heart rate.

Of course, it would be risky if wearables made a preliminary diagnosis and alarmed a person based on a heart rate alone. And this is where machine learning opens possibilities to increase prediction accuracy. It allows for adding more variables to the equation (such as demographic details, medical history, and medications) and exploits complex interactions between risk factors. This is not just an idea for the future; there are already trials that compare conventional (e.g., ACC/AHA risk model in the trial we explored) and machine learning-based methods of cardiovascular risk prediction. The latter adds more than 3% to the precision.

It’s hard to say now what accuracy of machine learning predictions is required to raise the alarm, but one fact is certain: the algorithms will become more sophisticated and will reach new levels of accuracy.

Empowering Seniors to Take Charge of Their Health

A prediction alone, however accurate, won’t save lives unless a wearable owner acknowledges the risk and takes action to mitigate it. Today’s wearables are equipped with GPS tracking and emergency SOS features so that users can quickly alert emergency services or their contacts. The idea of setting up an automated alert system that sets off at the first sign of danger may seem appealing – after all, it’s better to be safe than sorry. However, there’s a catch: most US health insurance plans for retirees don’t cover ambulance rides, which are classified as non-emergency. This means that if a senior receives a notification about a potentially life-threatening situation but doesn’t actually face an emergency, they could be left with hefty out-of-pocket expenses. After receiving a couple of such unexpected bills, many people would prefer to abandon their wearables.

So, what’s the solution? Wearable users need to take ownership of how they respond to these risk alerts. Fortunately, most healthcare institutions are now equipped with telehealth capabilities, allowing seniors to consult with their doctors remotely and decide whether a more comprehensive medical examination is needed.

How Predictive Wearables Could Change Lives

People of the senior generation

Besides promoting a healthy lifestyle with high activity levels and improved sleep quality, wearables offer a unique opportunity for older adults to detect health risks that might otherwise go unnoticed. It’s unlikely that anyone wants to wear a pulse oximeter throughout the day, but with a fancy wearable as an accessory, the experience might be much more enjoyable.

Still, some seniors may initially resist adopting wearables. Concerns about discomfort from wearing devices 24/7, especially for those not used to accessories, and the anxiety of being constantly monitored may deter them from fully embracing this technology.

Healthcare providers

For healthcare providers, wearables can become an important source of patient health data. Studies are already exploring the feasibility of developing comprehensive platforms that gather and integrate data from multiple sources – including wearables – to create a more holistic view of a patient’s well-being and enhance the quality of treatment. We anticipate further advancements in this area.

Caregivers should also take an active role in promoting wearables to seniors by clearly communicating the benefits, addressing safety and security concerns, and assisting with usability challenges. Such a proactive position can speed up the adoption.

Ambulance services providers

The shift towards preventive medicine that wearables will help propel will hopefully result in fewer emergencies. Moreover, reduced workload and a healthier work-life balance for emergency medical technicians could help address the alarming turnover rate, which stood at 36% in 2022.

Wearable manufacturers

Given that nearly 30% of the US population is over the age of 55, there is a significant opportunity for manufacturers of wearables. However, these companies should solve usability and accessibility issues that currently hinder broader wearables adoption among older adults.

Technology startups and vendors

For tech companies, a new challenge is emerging – developing software that aggregates data from wearables and other healthcare sources, such as EHRs. For this, a regulated process of accessing and extracting EHR-hosted patient data in a highly secure manner is required. It will involve patients’ consent to use their health data outside a healthcare institution.

The companies will also have to invest in training and iterating machine learning algorithms to achieve proper predictive accuracy. Although wearables are not intended to diagnose diseases accurately, risk alerts should not be sent without a solid reason, as seniors receiving false alarms will quickly stop using the devices sending them.