BIOMEDigital Event Summary and Q&A with Jeanette Numbers, Principal at Loft, LLC.

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The digital health revolution is currently underway and one area in particular seeing heighten interest from investors and the medtech community are medical wearables. While wearables to track fitness have seen popularity amongst consumers, a new frontier in medical wearables and its immense potential to help patients in collecting useful biometric data to diagnose and treat illness is now a leading topic of focus at BIOMEDigital, an all-new two -day free virtual event for the biomedical industry taking place November 4 and 5.

At BIOMEDigital, executives, designers, and all medtech professionals of all professional levels will have the opportunity to digitally network and engage through two days of expert-led content across five tracks spanning sessions,  industry trends, case studies, panel discussions, and interactive virtual sourcing in the only medtech virtual expo hall featuring 50+ leading medtech companies innovating the field today.

BIOMEDigital’s event director, Hayley Haggarty, speaks with BIOMEDigital speaker, Jeanette Numbers, co-founder and principal at Loft, LLC about the rise of medical wearables and where its headed in her session, “Wearables with Purpose: The Future of Healthcare.”

Haggarty: As a prominent speaker at BIOMEDigital, could you shed some light on your session, who should attend, and what attendees can expect?

Numbers: My session, “Wearables with Purpose”, explores technology that gives more than it takes. In other words, wearables that go beyond simply monitoring and tracking the wearer’s data to actually stepping in to provide helpful interventions when necessary.

Attend if you’re passionate about the future of wearables in healthcare and/or if you’re a technologist, innovator, or designer looking to create authentic devices that serve a real purpose.

Expect to see examples of companies doing wearables well and not so well. Expect to learn about the future of wearable technology and how we can play a conscientious role in ensuring the devices that are intimately connected to our lives are evolving in an ethical, sustainable, inclusive, and respectful way.

Haggarty: Wearables have immense potential to improve lives. What are the drivers behind wearable adoption in the medical field and what still needs to be done to push this forward further?

Numbers: The primary driver behind successful, long term adoption of wearables in the medical field will be the shift from data-first to user-first. The question determining the future of wearables is not, what can the device do for my company but rather, what can it do for the person who is wearing it? This is where proactive wearables come in. If we expect people to make these devices part of their lives, then the technology has to truly enhance their lived experiences, not just track data and monitor steps.

Pushing forward to a future where wearables of all types are widely adopted will require keeping the end-user top of mind throughout the design process and designing inclusively. When you don’t take into account all the potential users (from their anatomy, their age, etc.) you risk huge misses and poor adoption and compliance. On top of that, today’s consumers are increasingly wary of their data and where it goes. Truthful transparency about how data is being collected, stored, and used must go hand-in-hand with inclusive design. Ignore one of these crucial elements and the result could be a device that sits on a bedside table unused.

Haggarty: One of the most popular types of wearables are fitness monitors. What are other areas where wearables could be useful in the medical field?

Numbers: We’ve only scratched the surface of the potential applications for wearables in healthcare. I’m passionate about broadening the scope of wearables to go beyond just monitoring data or tracking “fitness” and ensuring that these devices are truly earning their place on our wrists, chests, and bodies. This is where proactive wearables come in. From a sleek bracelet that can help regulate body temperature, to a discrete device that can test for life-threatening allergens in a restaurant setting, the potential is virtually limitless when we approach wearables as problem solvers.

Haggarty: Anything else you would like to add?

Numbers: Now is the time to advocate for what we want from our technology. We have an opportunity to demand more from our wearables as customers, and to develop better products as designers, engineers, and folks in the medical space.

Innovators and technologists shouldn’t be held back by the daunting task of product development. Consumers are actively looking for alternatives to the status quo in wearables, and they're happy to pay out of pocket for devices that improve their lives. They’ve lost trust in the existing options – so let’s give them some new ones.