Wearable Devices in Health Monitoring from the Environmental towards Multiple Domains: A Survey.

Mostafa Haghi,Saeed Danyali,Ju Wang,Sina Ayasseh,Thomas M Deserno,Rahmat Aazami

doi:10.3390/s21062130

Abstract

The World Health Organization (WHO) recognizes the environmental, behavioral, physiological, and psychological domains that impact adversely human health, well-being, and quality of life (QoL) in general. The environmental domain has significant interaction with the others. With respect to proactive and personalized medicine and the Internet of medical things (IoMT), wearables are most important for continuous health monitoring. In this work, we analyze wearables in healthcare from a perspective of innovation by categorizing them according to the four domains. Furthermore, we consider the mode of wearability, costs, and prolonged monitoring. We identify features and investigate the wearable devices in the terms of sampling rate, resolution, data usage (propagation), and data transmission. We also investigate applications of wearable devices. Web of Science, Scopus, PubMed, IEEE Xplore, and ACM Library delivered wearables that we require to monitor at least one environmental parameter, e.g., a pollutant. According to the number of domains, from which the wearables record data, we identify groups: G1, environmental parameters only; G2, environmental and behavioral parameters; G3, environmental, behavioral, and physiological parameters; and G4 parameters from all domains. In total, we included 53 devices of which 35, 9, 9, and 0 belong to G1, G2, G3, and G4, respectively. Furthermore, 32, 11, 7, and 5 wearables are applied in general health and well-being monitoring, specific diagnostics, disease management, and non-medical. We further propose customized and quantified output for future wearables from both, the perspectives of users, as well as physicians. Our study shows a shift of wearable devices towards disease management and particular applications. It also indicates the significant role of wearables in proactive healthcare, having capability of creating big data and linking to external healthcare systems for real-time monitoring and care delivery at the point of perception.

Highlights

For the year 2016, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that outdoor air pollution caused death of 4.2 million people worldwide and that 91% of the world’s population breath unhealthy air [1]
Of these 3.8 million annual deaths, 27% were due to pneumonia, 27% due to heart disease, 18% due to stroke, 20% due to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and 8% due to lung cancer who are vulnerable to air pollutants [2]
volatile organic compounds (VoCs), carbon monoxide (CO), and O3 are known as the hazardous gases with an adverse effect on health, each integrated into 12 devices

Summary

Introduction

For the year 2016, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that outdoor air pollution caused death of 4.2 million people worldwide and that 91% of the world’s population breath unhealthy air [1]. WHO estimates that 3.8 million people worldwide lose their life due to indoor air pollutants caused by cooking with stoves running on solid or biomass fuels or kerosene. Of these 3.8 million annual deaths, 27% were due to pneumonia, 27% due to heart disease, 18% due to stroke, 20% due to COPD, and 8% due to lung cancer who are vulnerable to air pollutants [2]. These statistics indicate the significant and intensive impact of environmental factors on human health. These effects are higher in patients suffering from chronic diseases, such as heart disease and hypertension [8,9]

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion