Gone are the days when you had to go to the doctor to check your heartbeat or your O2 levels. Times have changed and now we are in the age of modern technology. This has enabled us to do things that we only dreamt of a few years ago. Technology has revolutionized the healthcare industry. Everyone is asking themself whether they need a smartwatch?

Take the Apple smartwatch for example. The new Apple watch has an ECG monitoring system that is just astonishing. Who would have thought a few years back that a small device like a watch could do this?

Although there are many companies that have enabled us to keep track of these things, Apple was one the best to implement it in the best way. Apple was not the first one to do this but they were definitely the ones who pushed the boundaries in wearable healthcare.

Smartwatches have enabled us to have 24*7 Access to health monitoring. What smartwatches have enables us to do is they have enabled us to keep track of our health 24*7. No matter what the time is we know that we can check out our heartbeat, our ECG, Irregular rhythm, and more.

There are many cases in which a smartwatch has saved a life. A person from New York was rushed to a hospital when his Apple Watch reported his heartbeat to be very abnormal. His watch alerted him to get medical attention. Later it was found out that he had an ulcer that had ruptured.

In this case, if he wouldn’t have a smartwatch he wouldn’t even have bothered going to a Hospital. It’s human nature that we don’t take some things seriously until it is too late. Technologies like a smartwatch warn us about these things early on. I read in one of the interviews that one of the Apple COO stated that “He has received tons of E-mails from people that have thanked him as Apple Watch has saved their lives by reporting a very fast heartbeat”.

A study was conducted by Stanford on the effect of smartwatches on detecting atrial fibrillation. The findings were just astonishing. Apple Watch could identify atrial fibrillation with 84% accuracy. Apple Watch proved to be a device that can be helpful in predictive and preventive health care. Predictive and preventive, these two things can save someone’s life. When people have a health problem they don’t notice it until their body is too much affected by a problem. We don’t do preventive things until we are sure that we have a problem. But by using a smartwatch that can detect unusual heartbeats we are bound to know that we have a health problem that needs to be addressed.

Smartwatches are also helping people to lead a healthy lifestyle as well. Apple Watch for example gives a reminder to stand up and have a walk if you are sitting for too long. It also reminds you to take deep breaths at a specific time of the day. Things like these have a huge impact on your lifestyle when you do it on a daily basis.

What smartwatches are going to do is enable people to lead a healthy life. What does this mean for the healthcare industry? As more and more features will start to come into these wearables, fewer people will need frequent visits to the hospitals. I am sure that in the coming future Smartwatches are going to reduce the costs of healthcare and this is a good thing. This can be possible as smartwatches are enabling people to have fewer in-person medical visits and by helping people with early diagnostics as well. Fewer visits to hospitals mean less demand for new medical devices. Medical devices are going to decrease in cost and this, in turn, will benefit the patients as well.