Wireless technology is about to take another leap ahead and it will definitely serve the increasing needs for transferring data to and from Health Tech devices: further, faster, and in bigger chunks. At a time with Internet-enabled device numbers are increasing at near exponential rates, the need for sturdier and stronger wireless standards is greater than ever. According to ABI Research, nearly one-third of the expected 48 billion Internet-enabled devices installed by 2021 will include Bluetooth.
The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) officially named the latest version of the core specification Bluetooth 5. Major advantages of the new specification include longer range (four times longer), faster speed (twice as fast), and larger message capacity (eight times as much), compared with Bluetooth 4. Bluetooth 5 also will play better with others, with improved interoperability and coexistence with other wireless standards, according to the SIG. All of these improvements are expected to be achieved without losing its low-energy functionality.
According to the Bluetooth SIG, consumers can expect Bluetooth 5 in new products within two to five months. For health tech devices, the implications for continuous monitoring over greater distance at faster speeds and with more information means that added convenience because of the greater possible distances between devices, even faster real world feedback and alerts, and the potential to transmit more types of data at the same time and/or data from more frequent measurements.
