Molex and Avnet co-sponsored a global design engineering survey that covers market drivers, trends, and barriers in the growing diagnostic wearable device market. A key finding indicates that miniaturizing sensors and connectors are the top challenges to making these devices smaller.
The report, Diagnostic Wearables: The Future of Medical Monitoring, identifies regulatory, technology, and adoption barriers that need to be solved before increasingly connected, smaller, and more powerful medical-monitoring wearables are ready for real time. The top five design challenges include cost (38%), durability (37%), power (35%), miniaturization (33%), data capture (30%), and connectivity (30%).
(Source: Molex)
Looking out over the next five years, design engineers expect consumer adoption of wearable devices that support obesity control (61%), posture sensing and correction (59%), breath-based disease detection (51%), reproductive health monitoring (50%), and infectious disease monitoring (49%). Other innovative wearable diagnostics for medical use include:
- Diabetes monitoring (most frequently mentioned)
- Dementia
- Mobile CT scans
- Hazardous exposure
- Dentistry
- Genetic abnormalities
- Nutritional intake
- Vision deterioration
- Pain monitoring and management
Challenges include expectations for ease of use (42%), the need for simple user interfaces and complete documentation (41%), uncontrolled homecare settings (40%) and a complex regulatory approval process (34%). In addition, 76% of survey respondents identified connectivity constraints as a major factor in collecting relevant data for tracking and analyzing health.
(Source: Molex)
Although it will take time, survey respondents believe there is potential for harvesting patient energy, including movement (49%), body heat (35%), and sweat (13%). OEMs are the most optimistic regarding energy harvesting with 20% reporting it will happen soon.
There are a range of advocates for wearable diagnostics with patients predominately driving demand (61%), followed by doctors and medical professionals (47%), and in-home caregivers (44%). While these groups are bullish on medical wearables, insurance providers are hanging back on wearable diagnostics adoption. At 31%, they are the least likely to advocate for wearables, followed by 27% of doctors and medical professionals. Patients are the least hesitant.
So, what’s stopping rapid adoption? Ninety-eight percent of respondents said barriers, primarily issues around approval and the utility of the data, continue to exist. For example, medical organizations will not work with devices that are not FDA approved and fitness and wellness tracker data is still not consistently good enough for diagnostic use.
Additional survey findings include:
- Making wearable diagnostics smaller is challenging because of miniaturizing the sensing elements (40%) and making hardware smaller (connectors) 39%
- An improvement in materials for wearables is necessary with 52% citing biocompatibility, 49% cite published functional and reliability data for emerging materials, and an increased focus on wear tests to understand materials performance in real-world situations (49%)
- 63% of those surveyed indicate that strong collaboration between industry, government, and academic groups will drive the greatest degree of innovations in diagnostic wearables. China ranked collaboration the highest in importance (75%), while the United Kingdom (52%), France (57%), and Germany (59%) were aligned with results from the United States (61%). Also globally, China is more likely to report struggles with connectivity constraints (93%)
- 94% said wearable diagnostics requires clear ownership of data security and privacy while 82% agree there is a lack of clarity on how to capture and use diagnostic data
- COVID was instrumental in changing attitudes towards medical devices in non-clinical settings (80%)
The survey highlights several key factors that will contribute to the success of diagnostic wearables. These include ease of use, affordability, and wide market availability as well as increased data collection capabilities based on sensor integration advances. While the challenges certainly exist, opportunities are expected to gain considerable traction over the next five years.
Dimensional Research conducted the survey, polling 603 individuals in design engineering roles with specific responsibility for diagnostic wearables.
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