#Wearables set to change our world / Radio 3 Hong Kong
HK3’s Phil Whelan was feeling a bit nostalgic this week as we looked back on the gold old days of wearing watches to tell the time and maybe the direction you’re heading in and how over the last decade or so its become “uncool”, until he recently noticed a growing band of tech wearables back on people’s wrist.
We chatted about Fitbit’s and similar wearables that were all the rage, how many early adopters seem to disillusioned with them as they find no real on going purpose in them and my belief that these devices will have a resurrection very soon as we begin to find more purposeful things to do with them.
This led us on to the incredible medical interventions and insights these devices have already brought about and will bring about, how through constantly on tech we are for the first-time getting real-time digital insights into our body and its working and the shift towards wellness that this is bringing about.
We then moved on to explore medical tech, remote medical robots, artificial intelligence diagnosis and the rise of health technology to explore a medical world that is just emerging in which we can live to 120 years of age and beyond in relatively good health using a combination of technology and human desire.
Have a listen now (16 minutes 51 seconds)…
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What categories of wearable technology have actually changed the world, and which have remained niche?
Wearable technology impact assessment a decade after the 2016 signal: the smartwatch category, led by Apple Watch, has achieved mainstream adoption and demonstrated genuine health value — cardiac monitoring, fall detection, and emergency response features have measurable life-saving impact; fitness trackers (Fitbit and successors) achieved substantial adoption and are now largely absorbed into the smartwatch category; hearables (wireless earbuds with health monitoring, hearing augmentation, and AI assistant integration) have become ubiquitous and are expanding in capability; continuous glucose monitoring wearables have transformed diabetes management and are extending to metabolic health monitoring; and smart garments (garments with embedded biometric sensors) remain largely in the research and specialist sports performance segments rather than consumer mainstream. The wearables that changed the world most did so through health monitoring rather than the quantified self tracking that received the most attention in 2016.
Q: What does the quantified self movement reveal about the relationship between data and behaviour change?
The quantified self movement — tracking personal data (steps, sleep, heart rate, calories, mood) to improve health and performance — has delivered a mixed evidence record: the tracking effect (the act of measurement creating awareness that produces behaviour change) is real but often temporary — people who start tracking their steps typically increase their walking, but the behaviour change often diminishes as novelty fades; the motivational variance is high — some people find quantified data deeply motivating while others find it anxiety-producing or demotivating; and the most durable behaviour changes from wearable data tend to be those where the data surfaces a genuine and previously unknown health concern (irregular heart rhythm, poor sleep quality, high resting heart rate) rather than those where it reinforces already-known but not-acted-upon health behaviours. Data availability is not behaviour change; the pathway between insight and action requires more than a step count.
Q: What is the HUMAND™ analysis of wearable technology’s role in health management?
The HUMAND™ framework applied to wearable health technology reveals a productive human-machine division of labour: machines (wearable devices and their AI analysis layers) are well suited to continuous monitoring, anomaly detection, longitudinal pattern analysis, and alert generation — tasks that require consistency, breadth, and persistence that humans cannot maintain; humans (both the wearable user and their clinical team) are better suited to contextual interpretation (understanding why an anomaly occurred), priority setting (deciding which signals warrant action), empathetic communication (discussing health concerns in ways that are motivating rather than anxiety-producing), and ethical judgment (deciding what to do with health information). The wearable health revolution’s most important design challenge is building the human-machine collaboration that makes the machine data genuinely useful rather than overwhelming.
Q: How can I book Morris Misel for a wearable technology, health data, or digital wellbeing keynote?
Contact the team at morrismisel.com/event-organisers.
HK3’s Phil Whelan was feeling a bit nostalgic this week as we looked back on the gold old days of wearing watches to tell the time and maybe the direction you’re heading in and how over the last decade or so its become "uncool", until he recently noticed a growing band of tech we.
The window between a signal arriving and it demanding a response is shortening. #Wearables set to change our world / Radio 3 Hong Kong is already shaping strategy conversations in forward-looking organisations. Treating it as a future concern rather than a present one builds a preparedness gap that will have to be closed under pressure.
The most important question is not whether #Wearables set to change our world / Radio 3 Hong Kong will matter, but how quickly it will matter in your specific context. Leaders benefit most from mapping the ripple effects early — not just the direct impact but the second and third-order consequences that arrive later and hit harder. That is the practical work of foresight.
