Why Medtech wearables wear off
Last night, I attended the thought-provoking @CambridgeNetwork seminar "Why not wearables?" - a no-punches-pulled exploration of the medtech wearables sector, from an innovator who had been through the loop a few times.
The history so far wasn't pretty. The speaker, Shamus Husheer, summarised that, to achieve positive healthcare economics and patient outcomes change, patient compliance was everything. And the evidence is that the best compliance typically comes from the patients that are already the most engaged and least in need of help. From a healthcare economics perspective, the vast majority of the cost is in treatment, rather than diagnostics, so the best chance of real value is disease prevention (heart disease being the best and most prevalent example). Whilst it's possible that wearables could play a role here, it would need MUCH better compliance from the higher-risk patient groups in order to be compelling.
Right now, consumer medtech is a long, long way from that, with even market leaders like Fitbit seeing 70 per cent of its user base giving up wearing them within 6 months. (Source: Shamus Husheer).
My own view is that self-directed disease prevention can work (e.g. smoking cessation, skin cancer protection) but that it needs cultural positives to encourage it (dare I say it but if vaping was perceived as a 'wearable', it could be seen as having a positive role here).
My takeout from the night: Consumer motivation for wearables still wears off too fast for long term success. We either need:
- wearables that don't need wearing - at least not consciously anyway
- Or....we need super-cool wearables like iPhones that carry status and appeal. But the cost of such kit (and its marketing) probably rule that out as a mass-device too.