What Does the Future of Medicine Hold?
“Convenient consumer health is on the rise thanks to biosensors that monitor your health anywhere, anytime.”
Disney sells magic. Amazon sells convenience. And as of recently, Disney sells the magic of convenience with Disney Streaming. The road sign to the consumer’s heart reads “convenience” in bold letters. And that’s precisely where the healthcare industry is going.
Going to see the doctor was never a happy encounter. To begin with, the theory of relativity very much applies to wait times in the doctor’s office. And if the doctor comes to see you during home visits, their visits are still a bad omen - you’re either sick, or a digital (AI) algorithm thinks you’re at risk of getting sick. Sorry doctors, the world needs you but dreads the instances when it needs you.
Thanks to advances in wearable technology, seeing the doctor no longer has to be a stressful episode.
Welcome to the World of Health Sensors
With smart health sensors, doctors can take a pulse of your health from a distance and proactively recommend therapeutics that fit your lifestyle like a glove. Such health sensors can be noninvasive (e.g., portable, wearable) or invasive (e.g., implantable or digestible) devices. Specialized health sensors can capture information from body movement, fluids, or bioelectricity and target signal types like electrochemical, optical, piezoelectric, thermal and nanomechanical signals. Talk about having a doctor in your pocket. Or skin. Or brain.
Health sensors capture and analyze quantifiable signals from various organ systems like the cardiovascular, metabolic, or nervous systems. Digital biomarkers - the data collected by health sensors - can help screen for disease, predict risk, diagnose and monitor your health. Paired with telemedicine, digital biomarkers empower doctors to consult and deliver personalized care remotely.
Collecting health data is nothing new. In the traditional healthcare model, doctors got a snapshot of your health via lab work, body scans, or other episodic bio-signals. On the one-off occasion when doctors could not readily qualify a condition, patients had to wear a clunky device that monitored physiological health for extended periods of time. What a pain those devices were. Fast forward, we can now continuously monitor health data with consumer-grade digital sensors that seamlessly blend into our daily activities.
Consumer-grade Health Wearables
Noninvasive devices made their way into consumer-land thanks to fitness applications. The first generation of consumer health sensors tracked heart activity to drive optimal fitness performance. But today, online marketplaces sell a rainbow of wearable devices specialized in more sophisticated health monitoring. Below is a non-exhaustive list of brands that collect and monitor different physiological or behavioral signals.
Heart activity (heart rate, HRV, ECG, blood pressure): Garmin, Lief, Neurosky, Mocacare, WIWE
Motion activity: Apple Watch, FitBit (recently acquired by Google), WHOOP, Misfit, Wahoo, Polar. Note that many of the motion tracker sensors also capture someheart activity.
Muscle activity: Athos
Metabolism: UltraHuman (glucose), Waveform (glucose), EpicoreBioSystems (electrolytes), FlowBio (electrolytes)
Posture: UprightPose
Digital biomarkers vastly took off in the consumer world thanks to growing interest in bio-hacking. See Tim Ferris as the vanguard of bio-hacking. Real-time and granular digital biomarkers were a foundational tool for those interested in becoming the best version of themselves. Digital biomarkers help optimize your fitness, sleep, hydration, metabolism, and mental health. Some of the companies mentioned above also offer closed-loop applications for management of body disorders like stress, diabetes. And in case you thought some things belong to nature and not nurture, companies like Lief seek to also optimize how you breathe. The Lief skin-patch measures heart rate variability (HRV) and breathing patterns to help you reduce stress through personalized biofeedback training.
Is there a winner in the space of consumer wearables? The jury is out, and the competition is tight because consumer taste changes with the wind. But aggregation platforms - Apple Health, Google Fit, Strava - have a solid charter set for themselves. Such health data platforms play friendly with the ecosystem of health sensors by centralizing data from multiple sensors in one convenient dashboard. Apple empowers hardware companies to experiment, build and validate specialized biosensors while Apple Health packages the biosensor data into consumer services. Collaboration is progress.
Clinical-grade Health Wearables
Beyond consumer applications, digital biomarkers are commonplace as endpoints in drug research, clinical trials, or clinical practice. Digital biomarkers allow for a better understanding of disease progression and therapy effectiveness. Biomarkers can improve the efficacy and safety of existing medicines and expedite the development of new drugs, ultimately improving health outcomes.
Digital biomarkers designed for clinical applications require a special grade of FDA clearance. While Fitbit and Apple Watch have been used in clinical trials, Verily - the life sciences bet of Alphabet - developed Verily Study Watch specifically for continuous monitoring during research and clinical studies. Clinical-grade data harmonization tools also tend to replace the likes of Strava and Apple Health.
Health and fitness have a long-standing affair. Wearable health sensors first gained widespread adoption in fitness, so fitness seems like an organic bridge into consumer health. Well-established fitness brands are on a quest to diversify their offerings and health services seem like a natural destination. CrossFit, for example, began experimenting with precision medicine in 2021. CrossFit Precision Care is a program run by CrossFit and piloted across several states in the US. At CrossFit Precision Care, fitness instructors are also certified MDs. This new breed of CrossFit instructor will review your bloodwork and genetic exams before creating a personalized fitness workout for every CrossFitter. The world is watching.
Special Mentions
Bioelectricity is one of the ways the body cells chatter. As bioelectric signals travel through the nervous system, they carry vital messages that control organ function. The information in these electrical signals can be recorded and manipulated for therapeutic effects. Bioelectric medicine taps into these natural signaling pathways in the nervous system. Implanted sensors stimulate targeted nerves, achieving therapeutic effects. With its many pathways, the nervous system is a natural route for therapeutic interventions to counteract dysfunction within the body. Bioelectric medicine holds real promise as an alternative or complementary therapy for conditions where traditional pharmaceuticals fall short. Modulating neural activity already provides treatments for diseases like arthritis (see Galvani Bioelectronics). Other diseases like Alzheimer’s, diabetes, heart failure, hypertension, and inflammation are in the research pipeline. New research also aim to interfere with the neuronal signaling that underpins cancer progression.
A notable mention in the world of neurosensors is NeuraLink, the brainchild of Elon Musk. NeuraLink applies neural engineering to increase channels of communication with the brain. Their primary application is enabling consumers to interface with the surrounding world through the power of the mind. Neuralink also brands itself as a therapeutic for paralysis. Neuronal modulations facilitated by Neuralink help people with paralysis regain independence through the control of computers and mobile devices. Such auxiliary devices give people the ability to communicate more easily via text or speech synthesis, to follow their curiosity on the web, or to express their creativity through photography, art, or writing apps.
Biosensor market to double to $36.8B by 2027
The global biosensor market is expected to reach $36.8 billion by 2027, according to AllTheResearch. Growing demand for home care medical wearables such as glucose monitoring and food quality protection drive an annual growth of 11%. Additional market drivers are the emergence of nano-biosensors, increasing prevalence of chronic disease, growing aging population, and the rising application of biosensors.
This Is Just The Beginning
There are many opportunities ahead but also some challenges for health biosensor. First: safety and second: security. Biosensors need to be secure to prevent unwanted access to such devices. Security must be built into every product layer, using strong cryptography, defensive engineering, and extensive security auditing. Luckily, there are good safety and security practices to be borrowed from sister industries.
