A wearable device used to monitor medical patients' vital signs.
Although once used almost exclusively in hospital intensive care units,
wearables have expanded into both standard hospital treatment rooms and being
used extensively with outpatients.
Wearables can vastly improve patient monitoring and significantly reduce the
risk of death in both noncritical areas of hospitals and for patients in their
homes. Furthermore, wearables can lower treatment costs without compromising
the quality of medical care. For example, a remote monitoring device has the
potential to reduce the number of a patient's visits to either a
doctor's office or a hospital for routine checkups.
Wearable devices come with risks. For example, use of remote patient
monitoring opens up the possibility that the hardware at the hospital or
healthcare facility where remote readings are being received suddenly fails in
some way or produces faulty readings. In addition, the person(s) charged with
monitoring/analyzing remotely received patient data may negligently perform
this role. Lastly, wearables expose a patient to the threat of hacking, which
poses various privacy risks.