Research Trends on Healthcare Wearables Published in Korean Journals

Abstract

Health care wearables are devices that are attached to or combined with the human body to improve the health care capabilities of the human body that can be safely and adjustable according to preference. This study provided direction for future research on healthcare wearables in the field of clothing science, considering trends observed in this field from 2010 to 2019. Over the last 10 years, 812 studies have been conducted on healthcare wearables in Korea. Research has increased significantly since 2015, with a large number of articles published in this field. The research for this study was broken down into the following categories: technology development, marketing analysis, and technology analysis. The results according to the research method demonstrated that development and production methods were used most fre quently, followed by trend analysis, experiment and evaluation, and survey. An analysis of keywords in the articles studied revealed that device, healthcare, big data (biometric data and database), and healthcare convergence technologies were trending. Similarly, detailed research on healthcare wearable devices and related technologies was actively being con ducted. However, focusing on fiber, textiles, design, and clothing articles, in relation to the field of clothing in healthcare wearables, only 81 articles were found on this topic (10.0%), which was low compared to other studies. Therefore, it was determined that more research on healthcare wearables is necessary in the field of clothing.