Android Wearables In 2014

Wearable technology in healthcare is in high consumer demand. ABI Research projects 32 million Bluetooth enabled sports and fitness devices will ship this year alone. Everyday items such as watches, bracelets, gloves and even hats, are being updated with Bluetooth wireless technology, allowing them to capture data and send it back to an application on a smartphone or tablet. Bluetooth Smart is the connectivity solution for wearable technology, spurred by growth in wearable sports and fitness trackers, which make up 96 percent of shipped wearable devices in 2013.

mHealth Watch

Virtual is a great space for leveraging technologies in face-to-face training, meetings, conferences. That is quite amazing how close this holedeck technology takes you! It is indeed, very “Telehuman” It will be interesting to follow Human Media Lab as it has other plans for this next-generation technology past videoconferencing. If you travel for business, anyone can fly several times a month as well more to attend meetings in different cities. With these technologies you can do the same things in those meetings without flying there.

The global telemedicine market will increase by a compound annual growth rate of 18.5% through 2018, according to a report by Research and Markets, FierceHealthIT reports. Research and Markets states, "The increase in telemedicine applications ... [is] due to the high prevalence of chronic diseases, consistent need for improved quality services and rising elderly population across countries which demand telemedicine to deliver improved products with higher patient satisfaction."

ABI Research segments the wearable technology market into seven sections: wearable cameras, smart clothing, smart glasses, healthcare, sports and activity trackers, wearable 3D motion trackers, and smartphone compatible watches. “The sports and activity tracker segment was the first to pop, with 32 million devices shipping in 2013 alone, but we expect to see rapid growth from smart watch, smart glass, segments in 2014,” said Josh Flood, analyst with ABI Research. “Bluetooth will be the primary connectivity technology for wearable computing devices, and Bluetooth Smart will play a key role in the device category’s success in the future.”