India is one of the fast developing nations of the world that has registered phenomenal growth in the last few decades. The technology plays a vital role here. There are a number of ways in which the modern technology is helping India. One of the sectors that have been decently benefited by the advanced technology and the latest developments is the healthcare sector.

The digitization, big data, and other latest technological developments have offered a number of benefits to the Indian healthcare system and have made it more efficient. One of the latest developments in the field of technology that can have a long-lasting impact on the Indian healthcare industry is wearables.

Let us see how wearable devices help India can combat some of the latest public and private health issues:

Healthcare infrastructure of India is still in need of massive funds

Despite the huge progress in different fields, the healthcare infrastructure of India is still far from being satisfactory and the situation in the rural areas is even more appalling.

• The total percentage of hospitals in the rural area is a tad above 30% and the percentage of hospital beds is around half of the same (at 16%).
• Worse aspect is the talented and qualified healthcare professionals as only 19 percent of specialist are available to tackle the special halt conditions of the people.
• When even the basic healthcare facilities cannot be met out sufficiently we can not expect our rural population to enjoy a robust healthcare system.
• However, if the wearables are distributed at the community centers in the rural areas at discounted or subsidized rates, it can offer the rural population a strong tool to take care of their health without any dependency.
• The best thing is that the wearable can help to take care of the complete lifecycle of medical and health situations right from managing the lifestyle till identifying the underlying issues and sending the relevant data to the healthcare professional.
• The challenge, however, would be to subsidize the huge costs of wearables and convince the rural population to use wearable on a daily basis.

Can be the best friend of the aging population

Calculating the current rate at which the elderly population of the world is increasing it can be evaluated that by 2020 the total elderly population across the globe it will experience a significant growth. The elderly age brings with it various healthcare issues and ironically it is the age when the person is not able to visit the doctors periodically for the regular checkups. The things are even more difficult for countries like India where the elderly people are less self-independent as compared to their western counterparts.

• The wearables, if used properly can save the elderly people of India form regularly or periodically visiting the healthcare professionals for health checkups.
• Many sophisticated wearables can not only monitor the biological stats of the body but can also send the data to the doctors for their perusal that eliminates the need for physically visiting the doctors for check up
• Besides, the forgetfulness, negligence, and lack of proper attention are other major factors that prevent the doctors from keeping a periodical track of the elderly people.
• However, the wearables can be programmed to automatically collect and send the data to the medical professions that eliminate the need of human intervention on a periodical basis thus there won’t be any human error that can disturb the message sending process.
• As the regular updating of the changing biological stats of the elderly population will be available with the medical professionals they will be in a better position to take proper care of the health of old people and take the proactive steps as soon as some alarming changes occur to the biological stats.
• It will certainly help to start managing the situation before it poses the serious health issues or this becomes complicated. 

Prevention-over-the-cure is the need of the hour

Keeping all the above factors in mind it is a no-brainer that India needs to focus on prevention rather than cure and it is here that the wearables can play a major role. In fact, one of the most important advantages of wearable is that they are able to monitor the biological round the clock and can record the real-time stats.

• It helps them in identifying even the minute changes in the stats that can potentially pose the risk to the person’s health in the long run. Thus the person is able to take the right decisions so as to prevent the more complex situations.

 Medical research can become easier

Apart from making the life easier for the people and promoting the client to “prevention over cure” the wearable can also help the medical fraternity to conduct research on the most complex healthcare issues that are still unresolved and also help them to predict the upcoming trends or patterns that can that indicate about possible challenges or new diseases caused by various factors like lifestyle, food, and even financial standards.

• So, it is the capability of wearables to record, collect and fetch the wholesome data that allows the healthcare professionals to conduct effective research and multiply the output of their efforts.

Better control over health during the younger age

While the old population will be able to gain an easy access the treatment by getting timely diagnosis thanks to the wearables, the young population of India will also be able to enjoy the better health conditions by wisely using the wearables that can help them in taking preventive measures.

In fact, a controlled study can easily reveal that the preventive measures taken during the young age can help prevent age-related diseases that occur during the old age.

• There are different sophisticated wearable’s that are fully capable of tracking the body temperature, heart rate, calorie that you have brunt and the rate of respiration along with other vital philological stats that help the doctors to detect the possible health issues that might affect the person during the old age.
• Depending upon such reports the person can be cautioned against the diet and lifestyle habits that can further increase their chances of getting affected by a specific disease during the old age.
• Besides the person can also be recommended the required modifications and adopt the healthy lifestyle that can significantly reduce the change soft them encountering the adverse health condition during the old age.

Challenges and how to overcome them

Now when we talk about the healthcare wearables, there are a number of challenges faced by the Indian population. While the ultramodern tech-savvy population of India is well aware of the wearables and have already used the same extensively, the traditional or rural population and those with limited funds are not aware of the wearables or using the same in the regular lifestyle. So the major question would be how to encourage such population to increase ether use of wearables.

• One ray of hope in this regards is that many lifestyle items used by the tech-savvy modern populating of India gradually make their way to the people with lesser funds and more traditional backgrounds just like mobiles, android, internet, and WhatsApp.
• So keeping in mind the usability value of wearables, it could be said that if the prices are reduced to make wearables affordable then the wearables may eventually be adopted by the masses 

Technical education should be provided to the stakeholders

However, in order to help the healthcare profession to enjoy the maximum benefits offered by the healthcare wearables its importance to offer them a well-developed technical knowledge that can allow them to acquire, manipulate and explore the diverse aspect so the data in order to reach the desired results.

• The lack of essential technical knowledge might also result in misinterpretation of the data or can affect the overall output due to the wrong technical process.
• Here one thing needs to be considered, Instead of relying only on the training the equal efforts should be made to simplify the technical process of utilizing and manipulating the data in order to reach the accurate results.
• Intuitive interface and quick, straightforward steps can help a long way in helping even the healthcare professional with limited knowledge to take the best adventurous of wearables.

Data Security is still a big challenge

The wearables contain a good number of key data and health stats that can easily be misused by the malicious elements with specific intentions. Right from the time of jogging until the most important life-saving medicines used by a specific person are all recorded in the wearables.

• The data on wearable can easily be transferred via the internet and increasing popularity of wifi points and IoT can help the clever hackers/malicious elements to gather such data with less difficulty.
• There have already been instances indicating that the data on the wearables is already used by the businesses to design their email marketing campaigns and decide the target audience. It shows that the data on wearables can be used for commercial purposes as well.
• The studies show that there is a lot to be done in order to make the wearable align with the best standards of security.

Author Bio

Annette is a content writer and director of operations. She writes for various industries like travel, wildlife, history, art, and of course technology! She works with B2B and B2C businesses providing digital marketing content that gains social media attention and increases their search engine visibility.