Wearable Sensors: A call to action for remote patient monitoring and assessment | Hacker News Reader

Wearable Sensors: A call to action for remote patient monitoring and assessment

frontiersin.org

27 pointslawrenceyan6 comments

I'm surprised to see that they apparently don't know that any wearable that uses optical sensors to measure heart rate can't measure HRV accurately. Optical sensors measure heart rate by averaging over time, which removes heart rate variability from the measurement. Also skin temperature is notoriously difficult to measure since it depends on how often a person bathes, whether they are perspiring, etc. I've never heard of a wearable that can measure core body temperature, wouldn't the sensor have to be placed inside the body? Most wearables use actigraphy to measure sleep, which means you have to tell it when sleep starts and ends, it can't tell the difference between watching TV and sleeping or detect when you take a nap. I seriously doubt you can get accurate respiration rate from a wearable also, especially when the person is moving around, unless they are wearing a chest strap, which most people find uncomfortable, especially if they have to wear it 24/7. I think they are way overestimating what wearables can do. There are some medical wearable patches that can do some of this, but they are generally really expensive and available via prescription only.

Looks like from their chart [0] the WHOOP may be the most affordable, most comprehensive (relative to COVID) wearable out there.

I actually built something to provide a "single view" of monitoring individuals' wearable metrics [1], launched it via HN a couple days ago [2]

[0] https://www.frontiersin.org/files/Articles/558695/fdgth-02-0...

[1] https://meports.com

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23677773

What I want is a system like this but set up to import all that data back into Apple Health. Each of these types of tools has their own systems for monitoring and reporting data, as you have discovered. But I only trust Apple to store my data long-term, and to keep it all on-device.

And I want support for more devices, like my Circul ring, instead of Oura. I don’t care if you have to scrape the data from their site, so long as I can import it back into Apple Health.

most of them have apple health connectivity. i have an oura, fitbit and whoop and they all sync into apple health.

COVID may be the proxy, but we should have this as a general purpose health platform. There are a variety of attributes to sense, but the difficult issues in implementation will be the larger system level integration:

- How to power it reliably

- The system needs to be 'transparent' to the wearer in many senses of the word. Put it on and forget it indefinitely whether sleeping, showering or exercising.

- It needs to be rugged to withstand any type of vigorous human activity: Triathlons, skydiving, roller coasters, dance contests, ...

- Likely, analysis systems will improve to enable early and accurate alerts. Where will those systems run? On our smart phones? in the cloud?

- The entire system needs to be low-cost. In fact, health insurance companies may want to offer them at no charge to their clients.

- Aaaaaand privacy...

In some senses, the actual sensor suite is a secondary design concern behind the system platform and architecture

You don't seriously think that the government wouldn't have access to this data stream?

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