Digital Lifescapes

Home-based healthcare options have exploded since the availability of internet access has become pervasive. Moreover, as healthcare shifts from reactive to proactive patient care, a huge market is ready for automation products that can help deliver health and wellness services through smart home solutions. The ubiquity of broadband connectivity, development of smart sensors, and the decreasing costs of devices have already made it possible to offer aging-in-place, chronic disease management, and post-acute care services in smart homes. Smart Healthcare Market Development However, digital health vendors are striving to take telehealth to the next level by developing solutions that will allow caregivers to check on the health of all the residents of the house, not just the patient's, monitor diet and nutrition, the environment, and overall wellness, and be integrable with existing and newer systems. "Patients are conscious of their health quotient and want to be involved...

Wearable technologies are not limited to consumer applications. Growing at a CAGR value of 56.1 percent over the next five years, wearable device technologies could become an integral part of enterprise mobile enablement strategies, according to the latest market study by ABI Research. The North American region will be the largest and grow at a CAGR value of 39 percent over the next five years. More interestingly, the Asia-Pacific region will become the second largest market -- outpacing Europe by 2019 with a CAGR of 90 percent. "There are cases being made for wearables in the enterprise despite the relative newness of the technology. However, which wearables are primed for enterprise usage and adoption is a more important question," said Jason McNicol senior enterprise analyst at ABI Research . Wearable technology such as smart glasses and those used for healthcare are better suited for the enterprise as corporate-liable devices. Smartwatches, on the other hand, will m...

When you imagine the emerging market for Wearable Technologies, you'll likely think of eye glasses or wrist bands -- not garments or apparel. Think again; there's more innovation coming to the rapidly growing wearable tech category. According to the latest market study by IDTechEx Research , the evolving field of electronic textiles (e-textiles) describes new technology that is reliant on e-fibers for electronic, electro-optic and electrical functionality. Today, only conductive weavable fibers are widely available commercially. Include in that embroidery and other interleaving technologies using ribbon or fiber. IDTechEx finds that 24 percent of e-textile development projects develop better conductive fibers and another 24 percent concern photovoltaic fibers. Next comes 16 percent of projects on supercapacitors on fibers, with several projects seeking multi-functionality on one fiber, such as supercapacitor layers to store the harvested energy from piezoelectric vibratio...

As the potential for smart wearable devices continues to draw new entrants into the market, it is the sports and healthcare functionality that seems to dominate shipments and drives future wearable device adoption. Today, the most popular device functionality is heart rate monitoring with close to 12 million devices shipped in 2013, according to the findings from the latest worldwide market study by ABI Research. These are primarily single function devices that communicate with nearby hubs such as smartphones or activity sports watches. Pedometers and activity trackers were the next two most popular devices, accounting for around 16 million devices combined in 2013. "The market for wearable computing devices is driven by a growing range of wireless connected wearable sports, fitness and well-being devices," said Jonathan Collins, principal analyst at ABI Research. Heart rate and activity monitors will outpace shipments of smart watches and glasses for some years to ...