Wearables: a trend in older adults

The 'wearables,' better known as wearable technology or smartwatches, have reached the market to facilitate access to your cell phone data, while you wear it on your wrist.

This technology, which has released Apple (with its apple watch), Samsung, Huawei, or even fashion houses like Michael Kors, also serve to measure calories, distance and other useful aspects for when you exercise. These can measure something as simple as the number of steps we take in a day since with the cell phone it could not be so exact because we are not with it all the time.

The consultant e-Marketer constantly carries out studies that allow measuring the reception of products like this in the market. The last one showed a significant tendency of older adults to this type of technology. This "technology to dress," although it is still more used in young people (with 38% of consumption), for the elderly passed, in 4 years, from 6.5% to 22%, according to the report of the consultant.

The same provided a predictive table, where it is allowed to see that the trend of older adults will grow in the next three years almost 5% more. Similarly, the report showed that in 2019 there would be approximately 56.7 million people who use "wearables" at least once a month, with Apple taking the lead in this business.

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This same brand, also, is the one that is most pointing to the use of these devices in older adults, with more health tools in its latest release. According to El Espectador, the newest launch of the Apple Watch, made in September 2018, chose to concentrate on monitoring the heart rate constantly, so you can create a report that can help determine health status or anticipate diseases. Also, it can detect if the person is unconscious, in case of an accident, to call emergency.

Exclusive wearables for them!

While all these devices, also called SmartWatch, have all kinds of functions for the elderly, there are also some created exclusively for them.

Infobae, for example, talks about Bipy, specialized in assisting older adults. It allows to generate emergency calls and has pre-established contacts. Besides, it has a real-time location system, and the person in charge of the adult can connect his smartphone to the device so that he can monitor different data of the elderly in real time. It also has the classic options to count the steps and keep track of the heart rate.

Similarly, some students from the School of Computing and Computer Engineering of the Central University of Chile, according to what was published by the Zoom Technological portal, also created a device that allows older adults to be monitored from a distance, in a that they can live alone, but without taking risks.

LatinAmerican Post | Juliana Suárez

Translated from "Wearables: una tendencia en adultos mayores"