Commentary: Biowearables are the future of personalized health care

People are hungry for information about their bodies. Nearly one-third of Americans don smartwatches and other wearable technology to measure things such as step counts, calories burned and heart rate, according to research published in the medical journal JAMA Network Open.

But simple measures like these don’t tell us much on their own. And most current wearables just sit on top of the skin. That limits what they can measure and the depth of value.

If personal health tech is to fulfill its promise, we’ll need better data that’s actually sourced from inside our bodies — and insights to act upon it. The next generation of biowearables can provide that information and that insight.

The potential returns — for individuals and for society — are enormous.

Consider how little the average person knows about their glucose levels — in simple terms, their blood sugar. This metric is a prime indicator of metabolic health — or how well the body is converting food and drink into energy.

Just 12% of Americans are metabolically healthy, according to research from the University of North Carolina. Poor metabolic health is associated with a broad range of chronic conditions. It can also debilitate the body’s immune system, impairing our ability to fight off common viruses and illnesses. If more people knew they were in poor metabolic health, they’d likely take steps to do something about it, given the stakes. Regular monitoring of blood glucose levels can serve as an early warning system — and compel people to make changes to their diet or lifestyle or seek medical care, if needed.

It’s hard to understate the potential benefits of early intervention that regular glucose monitoring could enable. Research shows that lower glucose levels in the general population correlate with lower long-term risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, Alzheimer’s and certain cancers.

Diabetes costs the United States more than $412 billion annually in direct and indirect medical expenses, according to the American Diabetes Association. The Milken Institute estimated that the total cost of chronic diseases caused by obesity and overweight was $1.7 trillion in 2016. Better management or prevention of even a modest number of these conditions could improve millions of lives and save billions of dollars.

Measuring glucose requires getting underneath the skin. That’s beyond the reach of the current generation of wearables — but not the next generation of biowearables.

The biowearable device we’ve developed at Abbott — Lingo — is a small biosensor containing a tiny filament inserted just below the skin on the back of the upper arm. It sends the wearer continuous updates on their glucose levels via an app.

Other devices in development that promise to bring our bodies’ insights out include microneedle patches to monitor dopamine in the body, smart contact lenses that measure intraocular pressure and patches that can detect metabolites and other molecules in sweat. Of course, as with any wearable device, raw data is only a first step toward better health. Consumers need guidance on how to interpret that data and use it to make decisions. Such coaching can be automated, customized and delivered via our phones. An app paired with a biowearable monitoring glucose, for instance, might be able to recommend when and what to eat or how much to exercise, based on the continuous data generated by the device.

Eventually, biowearables paired with apps with artificial intelligence capabilities will be able to learn how their users live — and offer predictive advice for tackling, say, a recurring spike in blood sugar or elevated levels of stress hormones at particular times in the day.

By empowering people to take control of their health and engage in preventive self-care, biowearables can help us end the “sick care” paradigm that has reigned in the United States for decades — and replace it with true health care focused on keeping us well.

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(Robert Ford is chairman and CEO of Abbott.)

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