Health and medical technology developments comprise the majority of our coverage on Health Tech Insider, especially for wearable and mobile devices. We also write about wearable tech that protects, alerts, or enhances in the workplace and everyday life. For example, we wrote about a smart car seat that measures EKG signals to detect incapacitated drivers developed by the Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems. We also looked at the Vigo phone headset that monitors drivers alertness. Snickers workplace wearables monitor worker health and safety.
CIO Review recently published a report outlining seven ways wearable tech is changing manufacturing. We’re not going to go into depth with each manufacturing wearable application in this space, but we will mention each category. The first area on the CIO Review list is safety awareness and safety equipment. Large firms are also using wearables to enhance hands-off employee training, which sounds to us like virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) applications. Situational awareness via IoT, sensors, and wearables can help employees and management alike with increased efficiency, production and a sense of direction in the dynamics of manufacturing enterprises. Predictive modeling with AR can assist with project design and preventative equipment maintenance. The potentials of sensor-driven IoT give managers opportunities to observe everything that is or isn’t happening in a production facility, allowing faster alerts to problems and the required attention. And last, authentication and security protocols using wearables give companies the ability to track everyone in the facility or on secured grounds at all times.
As it was with the Internet, technologists are now claiming that “IoT changes everything.” Workplace wearables, whether in the form of garments or devices, are already showing their potential to facilitate change in manufacturing.
