You’ve heard the buzz about wearable tech. Most of you have probably felt the buzz too, on your wrists, temples and ankles. If wearing your technology is the future, then the future is here in pretty full force.
Understandably, the biggest strides that wearable tech allows us to make are in the area that it touches most – the body. Fitbits monitor your steps and sleep patterns, Muse will track your brainwaves, and FitBark will monitor how many times your dog goes outside (presumably to remind you just how bad of a pet owner you are).
But if you think this technology is just for fitness geeks, think again. If you don’t hit the gym regularly, maybe you won’t be running out to the store quite yet, but as technology advances to bring exciting new products into existence, it will also make it more accessible and practical for those with less extreme cases of fitness-itis.
It will also likely allow for medical advances and monitoring for people with serious or persistent ailments and for your average health concerns. Technology is becoming available to keep an eye on your heart rate and blood pressure, which is especially helpful for people with heart conditions, but could potentially also alert you if something abnormal occurs in your heart, like if you are under extreme amounts of stress that could lead to a heart attack.
Though the medical technology is a little farther off, with most of the marketed products being sold in places outside of the US, if iPods and mp3 players can go through an entire lifecycle in under 15 years, there’s no doubt we’ll soon have fitness-tracking, wearable technology that we haven’t even dreamed of on our bodies in no-time.
There are already plenty of Kickstarters and Indiegogo campaigns out there to bring these fantasies to life. There are water bottles that sync with your phone and tell you when to hydrate., and a watch to predict and alert others about seizures. And those are just some of the more popular ones.
Photo: Cuff
