When almost anyone rolls up their sleeves today, you’re likely to see a Fitbit, Apple Watch, or some other wearable technology monitoring how much we move, heart rates, calories in and out and loads of other data. The wearable tech trend is expected forecasted to hit $126 billion in sales by next year.

As the technology continues to evolve, the devices are going from simple motivational tools to something that can have a real impact diagnosing, treating and monitoring patients. It’s simply a matter of creating actionable information from all that data being collected.

Diabetics are able to monitor blood sugar levels and adjust insulin accordingly.
Tracking calories and exercise and changing our diets appropriately or making adjustments to sleep routines to make sure we’re getting a proper amount of sleep.

Experts expect data from our wearables to be soon be importable into Electronic Medical Records, giving doctors access to much more data than is shared verbally by the patient.

Insurance companies are also interested in the technology, using health and fitness data to create incentive programs to manage risk and costs. This does, however, create some major privacy concerns.

As with all uses of wearable technology, the user should ultimately decide the balance between sharing information and protecting privacy but the possibilities of improving our health and fitness are exciting!