JÉRÔME MOULY¹, SYLVAIN HALLEREAU²
1. Yole Développement, Villeurbanne, France
2. System Plus Consulting, Nantes, France

Abstract

Medical wearable industry is showing an impressive 31% growth between 2018 and 2024, mainly due to the interest of the consumer. Companies consumerization of healthcare is paving the way for a new era. But the story is not so simple. Indeed, wearable technologies are meeting the challenges from the medical world. At the same time, Apple is deploying a powerful strategy to penetrate the medical field. The Apple Watch Series 4 integrating for the first time a medical grade electrocardiogram sensor, is a key example to illustrate the technical advances of Apple and its strategic market positioning. Medical wearables are the convergence of two worlds … What is the status of the industry? What are the technology improvements today?… The personalized medicine comes true.

In today’s wearable technology market, the vast majority of growth has been in consumer sports, fitness, and wellness and many smartwatches have tracker activities and heart rate sensors (PhotoPlethysmoGram – PPG) integrated, but these sensors are far from medical-grade expectations. Wearable devices for health and medical use are rapidly expanding and this market should reach US$32 billion by 2024 with a year-to-year 31% growth between 2018 and 2024. Key drivers for medical wearable adoption are the need for a deep transformation of healthcare to a patient centric approach and the availability of miniaturized sensors coupled with communication infrastructure. Apple is paving the way in reducing the gap between consumer and healthcare applications, unveiling in mid-2018 its Apple Watch Series 4, integrating for the first time a medical grade electrocardiogram sensor.

Apple enters the medical world with the new Apple Watch Series 4. The watch’s evolution from a fitness tracker into a health-monitoring device makes it vastly more interesting. The new smartwatch integrates the first (ElectroCardioGram) ECG sensor, which together with the ECG applicatio ...