The Role of Wearable Technology in the Pharmaceutical Business

Ever since 1898 when Miller Reese Hutchison used an electric current to amplify sounds and thus created the world’s first hearing aid and wearable technology, people have been using such innovative devices to enjoy a better quality of life and take better care of their health.

In more recent times the term "wearable technology” has been more closely related to devices such as smart watches and activity trackers which can help users monitor their activity levels and measure factors such as calory burning, steps taken, and heart rate – although it should be noted that the accuracy of the data produced by current wearable technology is highly debated.

Of course, any technology which can track health related information can be of use to pharma brands seeking to learn more about their customers and we are seeing wearables become increasingly relevant in the DTC sector of the pharmaceutical business.

Wearable Technology

Despite their arguable accuracy, the advantages of wearable technology when it comes to healthcare are multitudinous. Firstly, there is the fact they allow users to exercise a higher degree of control over and engagement with their own healthcare – something which patients often report lacking when being treated for a condition.

Simultaneously, they also provide pharma brands with the opportunity to create more objective measures of patient health – something which is particularly useful when it comes to conducting clinical trials for new treatments and other healthcare products. According to Intel and Kaiser Associates, wearable technology will be incorporated into a massive 70% of clinical trials by the year 2025.

Wearable technology is deployed most commonly to measure biorhythms such as heart rate and metabolism, it’s true. However, we are increasingly seeing the tech being used to help patients manage a wide range of conditions – even those without easily detectable physical markers such as depression. Wearable technology can be used to help patients catalogue and therefore better identify the triggers which can set off bouts of depression or anxiety and thus help them gain a deeper understanding of their condition and how to best manage it.

"Such designs require expertise in chronic illness care, surgical outcomes, post-discharge care, neurology, and emotional well-being,” said Director of the Interdisciplinary Consortium on Advanced Motion Performance (iCAMP) at Baylor and Co-Director of the Center to Stream HealthCare in Place, Dr Bijan Najafi. "The goal is to shift to more personalized care that empowers patients to be engaged in self-care, helps caregivers better support their loved ones, and allows providers to continue providing high quality care for the patient’s needs at a lower cost.”

The Future of Wearables in Healthcare

According to Insider Intelligence, more than a quarter (27.2% or 93.7 million people) of US citizens currently use wearable technology to monitor their health with the number of health and fitness app users predicted to stay above 84 million through 2022 and into 2023.

This market penetration will undoubtably influence health insurance brands, healthcare providers, and other healthcare adjacent companies to include the data from wearable technology in their marketing and the provision of their core offerings.

Because wearables incentivize healthier behavioral choices, insurers can use them to offset the rising cost of per patient, while pharma brands can leverage third-party data to drive, not only clinical trials, and product manufacturing, but also guide marketing campaigns by discovering the conditions which are most prevalent in society at any one time.

We are also likely to see employers increasingly offering wearable technology to their employees. A healthier corporate culture is shown to reduce employee turnover – employers who offer five or more well-being best practices had an average turnover of 18%, compared to 29% for those that offer two or fewer.

As the market penetration for wearables becomes ever greater, pharma brands are going to be able to draw on an increasingly large pool of data to drive evidence-based business decisions and deliver up to data and relevant healthcare information. The accuracy of the data harvested from wearable technology is also improving with every generation which means the insights gleaned from these devices are going to become more valid and dependable as time goes on.

Final Thoughts

As you can see, whilst the technology which underpins wearables is far from perfect, we are already seeing these devices being deployed to improve clinical outcomes, allow people to engage more deeply with their own healthcare, and provide a rich seam of data pharma brands can draw on for both research and development and sales and marketing.

Wearable technology is sure to be a hot topic at Future Pharma 2023, being held in June at The Westin Copley Place, Boston, MA.

Download the agenda today for more information and insights.