4.) New Business Models

There are only so many form factors, but patient data has an almost unlimited potential. “As the data from wearable devices becomes richer over time with better sensing technology, the ecosystem of players creating new benefits from the aggregation and analysis of this data will expand,” Ledger says. AliveCor recently received FDA clearance for its algorithm to detect heart arrhythmia using its smartphone-based ECG. And Apple and Google have probably made the biggest strides thus far in creating an mHealth ecosystem with HealthKit and Google Fit, respectively. Both are designed to aggregate data from your various wearable devices and apps. Samsung has also made a push in the open-source hardware arena with its Simband as well as its open source operating system Tizen. The understanding across companies off all sizes is that creating useful, data-based outcomes will be a big driver in mHealth and wearables. “As more sophisticated wearables like smartwatches begin to support applications (such as Pebble and devices running Android Wear do), the developer ecosystem will drive an increasingly large amount of the innovation,” Ledger says.