The evolution of at-home health monitoring
The health and fitness technology market has grown exponentially. The development of at-home health monitoring devices was driven in part by COVID-19, which saw an increase in consumer demand for medical and health devices that would have been, pre-pandemic, synonymous with a clinic, GP surgery or hospital, such as blood pressure monitors, oximeters, and thermometers.
The global wearable technology market size was estimated at USD 84.2 billion in 2024 and is anticipated to grow at a CAGR of 13.6% from 2025 to 2030, driven by an increasing demand by consumers to be proactive and to understand their health, body and wellbeing. From simple heart rate and quality of sleep monitoring, to more advanced monitoring of glucose levels and ECG, these tools have become essential for consumers to monitor their health and wellbeing, thereby empowering them to make data informed decisions and enabling them to apply changes to their daily activities and lifestyle, through the monitoring and insights these products offer.
Wearable technology, such as smartwatches, fitness trackers, and continuous glucose monitors, offer real-time data collection and analysis, allowing for early detection and intervention of potential health issues. However, that is not all, this is just the tip of the iceberg; the healthcare segment of the global wearable technology market is expected to grow significantly between 2025 and 2030, moving significantly from wrist-wear and smart rings, to bodywear that can monitor homeostatic changes, track patterns and, offer a data driven understanding to bio-environmental influences on health and wellbeing.
Health and fitness technology has rapidly become a permanent fixture in our everyday lives. Our thirst for connection, automation and convenience is driving market investment and innovation to bring consumers closer to the realities of personalised healthcare and patient-centred care, which can be rooted to data and monitoring. This will empower positive life choices on the one hand and supporting proactive health management on the other. It will improve health literacy and offers the potential to reduce health inequalities if implemented correctly, and supporting patient driven home management and prevention, as well as supporting prudent healthcare delivery by potentially delivering care by data informed need to deliver the right care, at the right time, at the right place and by the right team.
Digital health solutions: How digital can the NHS go?
The COVID-19 pandemic revealed what many health professionals already suspected, our health care system is overburdened. Our previous articles have highlighted many challenges the NHS faces and what is needed to keep up with the demand of an aging population, and a global world that brings unique and complex health challenges. To relieve an overwhelmed system, health care must turn to technology and must work with leading health tech companies such as Google (Fitbit), Apple, Garmin, Samsung, and Siemens Healthineers, to name a few. (Check out the Top 100 Healthcare Technology companies of 2024 here)
Smart health technology employs the Internet of Things (IoT) concept to interconnect and share data among devices in a network. The main advantage of using IoT technologies is that they provide objective data in real time. Sensor data collects passively without human effort; it is minimally invasive, if at all, with the user able to go about their day forgetting about the device, the data is continuously collected, uploaded to the cloud storage and immediately available for analysis and interpretation. The analysis can be conducted automatically, and the resulting insights can be shared immediately with users. Due to this seamless and non-invasive monitoring, it provides a simple and efficient mechanism of data monitoring in a passive manner, reducing the well-known and accepted risks of performance and recall biases associated with traditional data collection methods, which rely on the user to input.
Imagine a future where wearable health technology data seamlessly syncs with NHS health records. This integration could revolutionise both individual care and health management, providing clinical teams with continual monitoring, a holistic view of a patient’s health and wellbeing, and providing vital data that can be used to support testing and diagnostic decision making. Further when combined with machine learning and AI, this could surpass any current multi-disciplinary team (MDT) meeting in an overstretched and under-resourced NHS service, leading to better clinical decision making, generation of differential diagnoses, and rapid identification of the very latest evidence-based treatments and emerging clinical trials for greater clinical and patient choice. It could truly move the NHS to personalised medicine, and fundamentally transform the triad between individual, technology and clinical teams.
Smartwatches: More than just fitness trackers
Smartwatches are at the forefront of wearable health tech, with brands like Garmin, Google (Fitbit), Samsung, and Apple leading the charge. These devices have moved beyond basic activity tracking and now offer a range of health-monitoring features:
- Apple Watch Series 9 and Samsung Galaxy Watch 6: These devices feature built-in ECG monitors capable of detecting atrial fibrillation (AF) and irregular heart rhythms, alerting users to potential cardiac issues.
- Garmin Venu 3: While traditionally focused on fitness, Garmin has also integrated advanced heart rate monitoring and sleep tracking.
- Google Pixel Watch 3: A smartwatch that houses a slew of health features powered by Fitbit. This model offers ECG and blood oxygen sensor to support vitals tracking, as well as wellbeing statistics.
The potential of wearable tech extends beyond individual insights when integrated into broader healthcare systems. Aggregated and anonymized data could offer public health insights, from tracking community exercise patterns to monitoring chronic disease prevalence. Whilst on a personal level, data sharing can support clinical decision making which may identify chronic conditions, lifestyle changes and modifications, and medication optimisation based on lifestyle, biological and biochemical manifestations.
The untapped potential in health management and proactive preventative care at the individual, community and socio-economic level
With wearable data available to healthcare professionals, it becomes possible to identify health risks before they develop into critical issues. Through continuous monitoring, the smart health devices can be harnessed to detect, diagnose and monitor, all with minimal resource and from the comfort of ‘at home devices’ with minimal disruption to patient’s lives:
Detect: Data on heart rate, blood pressure, and physical activity could indicate the early onset of cardiovascular issues, prompting preventative measures.
Diagnose: Sleep pattern, HR monitoring, activity patterns and fatigue can act as indicators for-conditions such as sleep apnoea, enabling early interventions and further tests.
Monitor: Continuous data from wearables could reduce the need for frequent clinic visits, allowing patients with chronic conditions to manage their health remotely.
At the community level, the collection and analysis of sensor data could inform public health initiatives. Aggregated and anonymised wearable data could provide invaluable insights into community health trends and could identify onset and progression of age-related diseases, incidence of new diseases or behaviour change following system changes such as, withdrawal of a large employer in an area, and the impact on physical activity, sedentary behaviour etc. As well as the analysis of behavioural impact following community level health interventions.
For example:
- Identifying Risk Hotspots: Wearable data could reveal areas with high prevalence of hypertension, prompting targeted community interventions.
- Monitoring Health Outcomes: Public health initiatives could be monitored for effectiveness in real-time, allowing for more agile responses.
- Personalised Public Health Messaging: Insights into lifestyle behaviours could guide more personalised and effective health campaigns.
At the socio-ecological level, this data could provide invaluable data to inform policy making and decision making, as well as planning and transforming services based on needs and population trends, through real time data informed processes.
For example:
- Health Needs Assessment: Taking a data-informed approach from health technology devices at the Lower Super Output Area can help decide and prioritise service provision based on need, with a view of reducing health inequalities and improving health outcomes in the geographical space.
- Local Development Plan: Wearable data can identify health behaviours and hot spots that can inform the planning of new developments including leisure facilities and access to green and open access space.
- Service planning and health trajectories: Using this powerful data can support understanding health trajectories, and statistical modelling of odds and hazard ratios for areas, to support the planning of the types of services that may be required in these areas in the future, all based on current data and health trajectories.
The future: Personalised and proactive care
The vision for wearable health tech is not just about tracking fitness or managing chronic conditions but creating an interconnected system where devices learn from daily patterns and guide users toward healthier lives. The potential for integration with healthcare systems like the NHS could herald a shift from reactive to proactive care, where early warning signs are addressed before they become critical health issues.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting has talked about a proposal to give wearable health technologies to millions of NHS patients in England, enabling them to track symptoms such as reactions to cancer treatments, from home. Many doctors, however, remain cautious about using health data captured by wearables.
Dr Helen Salisbury, a GP at a busy practice in Oxford, is one of those sceptics: “I think for the number of times when it’s useful there’s probably more times that it’s not terribly useful, and I worry that we are building a society of hypochondria and over-monitoring of our bodies….I’m concerned that we will be encouraging people to monitor everything all the time, and see their doctor every time the machine thinks they’re ill, rather than when they think they’re ill.” She makes a further point about the psychological use of this data as a kind of insurance policy against shock health diagnoses, “A nasty cancerous tumour for example, is not necessarily going to be flagged by a watch or an app”, she says.
Here at MPM Health, we are working with global innovative health tech companies to bring the very latest and best to patients, supporting them from the comfort of their own home, through wearable health tech, to provide personalised data and health status reporting. We are on a mission to improve health literacy and empower patients to take control of their health and wellbeing; and to enhance the NHS through an integration of ‘at home’ and community-based care provision.
We are already seeing the emergence of camera-based methods using the concepts of colour and motion. Photoplethysmography (RPPG), measures the colour variation of the face generated by reflectance of blood, whereas ballistocardiography (RBCG), measures the subtle motion of the head generated by heartbeat. Further, ECG as a biomarker is making significant progress, with AI supported interpretation through beat-by-beat analysis to interpret visible and hidden signals within ECGs. So maybe we are that little bit closer to having that nasty cancerous tumour flagged to us by an app and early on in its development.
Wearable tech has the power to help individuals take control of their health while also informing clinical teams as an adjunct tool. As innovation continues, the combination of personal empowerment and health management could lead to a healthier, more data-driven future, and early identification. We believe this will completely transform 21st century healthcare.
A vision for integrated wearable health tech: A personal perspective
I am deeply invested in monitoring my health and wellbeing, leveraging the capabilities of modern wearable technology and health apps. On my phone, I have a dedicated folders of widgets that brings together all my health and fitness apps: iHealth, MapMyRun, MyFitnessPal, Garmin Connect, Gym App, MyZone, Boditrax, Men’s Health, Renpho Health, NHS App, and my surgery app. This collection reflects my commitment to understanding my body and optimising my health.
I primarily use my Garmin watch to track my sleep patterns, heart rate, and stress levels. I have set notifications for raised heart rate alerts, both at rest and during exercise, to ensure I can spot any anomalies early. During my runs, I use MapMyRun in tandem with my Garmin to compare my performance across sessions, looking for trends related to pace, endurance, or overall fitness.
After each session, I cross-reference this data with my meals tracked in MyFitnessPal to see if nutrition could have impacted my performance. For instance, I look at whether eating differently before a workout led to better stamina or energy levels. To further make sense of these data points, I input them into ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot. These tools help me identify anomalies and suggest ways to enhance my health, gym performance, running efficiency, sleep quality, and stress management. By combining different datasets, I gain a nuanced understanding of how various factors interrelate.
Despite the wealth of data I collect, the biggest frustration is that I have to manually transfer data between apps, input figures into a spreadsheet, and then analyse trends using AI tools. It’s time-consuming and inefficient, especially when I know the potential exists for automation.
I envision a future where these data points are automatically integrated, producing daily, weekly, and monthly reports on my health and wellbeing without manual input. These reports could offer insights into trends over time, allowing me to make more data-driven lifestyle adjustments.
I wonder what your routine is? Have you come across anything innovative or game changing? Let us know in the comments, and please share your thoughts and tips.Bridging the gap between personal monitoring and healthcare
This lack of integration doesn’t just impact my personal experience, it also affects the healthcare I receive. Recently, I was notified throughout the day on my Garmin that I had an abnormal heart rate at rest and subsequently at a routine clinic appointment I was found to have high blood pressure. Following discussion with the doctor and sharing my data insights from the Garmin, it was decided that I should monitor my blood pressure at home twice daily for four days.
The process was frustrating and inefficient, which involved manually entering readings via a link sent by the GP. The process was clunky and prone to error. The instructions were not clear, and the same link was to be used but only once per day. As a result, the first day only allowed me to report the morning reading, and for the rest of the days I had to take my morning reading and record the information on my phone or on paper and upload both readings in the evening.
An integrated system would seamlessly transfer that data from the Renpho app (the blood pressure monitor I use) to my GP record, removing the administrative burden on me as a patient and likely at the GP end where someone would have to manually record that data.
In an ideal system, the data from my Garmin, Renpho devices, and other health apps would seamlessly integrate into one platform, automatically generating reports for both me and my healthcare team, leading to automated and proactive data sharing, longitudinal monitoring and improved efficiencies.
A call for innovation: Connecting the dots
Wearable technology has immense potential, but without integration, it remains underutilised. We need a system where data from various wearables and health apps converge into one user-friendly dashboard, providing comprehensive insights for both patients and healthcare providers. A good case for this has been made in the UK Government’s digital transformation as well as the drive to deliver care closer to home and out of hospitals and into the community.
Pritesh Mistry, digital technologies fellow at the Kings Fund, acknowledges the significant challenges around integrating current patient-generated data into the healthcare systems, and adds that the discussion has already been going on for several years in the UK without any clear resolution. “But without that underpinning foundation of technology enablement in terms of the infrastructure, and supporting the workforce to have the skills, knowledge, capacity and confidence, I think it’s going to be a challenge,”.
Final thoughts
This is not just about making life easier; it’s about redefining healthcare. By leveraging the data, we already collect, we can move towards a future where individual health management and population health strategies work hand in hand, ultimately improving outcomes and enhancing patient autonomy.
This article is the second in a series of three around wearable health tech and proactive health and wellbeing monitoring and management. The first in the series in March looked at the emergence and evolvement of health tech and the UK commitment to digital transformation. This article took a deeper dive into what the integration of data from health tech with health system data, can deliver, in conjunction with some personal reflections and our vison for a future integrated health system.
The final article in this series will launch next month and explore the ethics, data security and legislative considerations that need to be overcome, to allow the realisation and integration of such a promising advancement in health.
Let’s chat
If you work in healthcare please share your thoughts, or if you know someone who does please share this article with them so they can. Maybe you and your team have experience of using wearable health tech with patients? Maybe you see the benefit of its use within your area of work? Can you offer your reflections for others? We would love to hear from you.💡 Additional Insights:
Wearable tech can monitor our health but why are doctors so sceptical? – BBC News
Fusion Method to Estimate Heart Rate from Facial Videos Based on RPPG and RBCG – PMC
The Top 100 Healthcare Technology Companies of 2024 | The Healthcare Technology Report.
Welsh NHS ‘in urgent need of turnaround’, report says – BBC News
Wearable Technology Market Size | Industry Report, 2030
Health Monitoring Using Smart Home Technologies: Scoping Review – PMC