While wearable Health Tech devices can help individuals directly, one big part of their potential is the creation of Big Data sets that can be mined for information that will benefit the population as a whole. The data from these connected devices is beginning to pile up.
Neurometrix has a pain-relief product called Quell that we have covered in the past. It uses pulses of electricity to help block pain signals in your body, whether you are active or asleep, and has been cleared by the FDA for over-the-counter sales without a prescription. The device also collects data about treatment sessions and the wearer’s activity, which is then stored in the Quell Health Cloud. The company recently announced that they now have more than one million hours of user data uploaded to their system.
The company has already been able to extract useful information from this data. The average wearer uses the device for six hours a day, and more than 70% of the users wore the device while sleeping. “We have only started mining the data,” according to Shai N. Gozani, M.D., Ph.D., President and Chief Executive Officer of NeuroMetrix. “This data is also valuable for better understanding chronic pain at a population level.”
As more and more of these data sets become available, and can be cross-linked to find additional correlations, we can hope to find more effective and faster treatments for a variety of diseases and chronic conditions.
