Evolution of Wearable Devices in Health Coaching: Challenges and Opportunities

Abstract

Wearable devices hold an enormous potential in contributing to an improved global health. The availability, non-invasiveness, and affordability of those systems make them promising candidates to transform the standard of care for health coaching. These wearable devices are now considered as versatile coaching systems. Patients who wish to improve their health and well-being refer to wearables for tracking and quantifying their improvement. The timeliness of the “wearable device as a health coaching enabler” field of research will inevitably know a prominent growth in the upcoming years. This growth is expected to stem from both the computing and the medical fields. In this perspective article, we list the potential challenges as well as the opportunities of this newly born field from an interdisciplinary perspective. We mainly focus on both the computing and healthcare perspectives. We also chart guidelines for the healthcare research community that is willing to get involved in the computing field to harness the benefits of wearable devices.