NHS's Sir Bruce Keogh claims wearable tech could revolutionise healthcare
NHS medical director believes smart devices could help to slash hospital admissions
The NHS's medical director, Professor Sir Bruce Keogh, has claimed that wearable technology could revolutionise healthcare.
The wearable technology market, which includes Apple's Watch (pictured), is one sub-section of the Internet of Things (IoT) phenomenon, which IT research agency IDC believes is expected to grow by more than $5tr between 2014 and 2020 - hitting the $7.1tr mark in 2020.
Keogh believes that devices that can monitor a person's heart rate, calorie intake or the distance covered in a run, could play a pivotal role in the NHS's future.
"Fitness trackers are becoming increasingly sophisticated. But there are devices coming along which not only measure how much exercise you do but can also measure your heart rate, your respiratory rate, and whether or not you've got excess fluid in your body - quite complex changes in your physiology," he told the Guardian.
He believes technology is emerging that will enable all this data to be brought together and transmitted through mobile phones or other devices so that health professionals can analyse it and act on any warning signs.
"I see a time where someone who's got a heart failure because they've had a previous heart attack is sitting at home and wearing some unobtrusive sensors, and his phone goes, and it's a health professional saying: ‘Mr Smith, we've been monitoring you and we think you're starting to go back into heart failure. Someone's going to be with you in half an hour to give you some diuretics," Keogh suggested.
He believes that technology can allow health professionals to predict things and act early, thus preventing unnecessary admissions. This would in turn take a load off the NHS, but Keogh said that it would also keep people "safe and feeling good".
In the future he said that people with conditions such as diabetes, health failure, liver disease or asthma will wear devices, skin sensors or clothes capable of detecting deterioration, which will be monitored.
Keogh referred to one NHS community care trust that saw a 75 per cent drop in admissions to hospital, thanks to the introduction of Android tablet computers fitted with an app devised by digital health company Docobo.
He suggested that over the next few years the NHS will have a "huge rollout" of such devices as part of "a revolution in self-care".
The amount of data that is likely to be available to health professionals if that were to happen would be enormous.
"Imagine in five or 10 years, if each of us had nanotechnology embedded in us to help fight various forms of diseases," he told delegates at Infosecurity Europe 2013.
"Once those markets are present [of a disease], they will be detected and fed into your house's gateway and then will be processed into the healthcare system. Being able to do that with animals and humans - that is when you're really embracing big data," he said.
These issues and many more will be discussed in more depth at Computing's Big Data and Analytics Summit on March 26th in London. Attendance is free for end user delegates.