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If you have to blame someone for the recent wearable era we’re now living in, blame sci-fi movies. Back to the Future II made us think self-lacing shoes, self-drying jackets, and personal Virtual Reality goggles were possible. (That film’s two for three right now.) Tom Cruise had us thinking specialized gloves might one day control computers in Minority Report and he introduced us to computerized contact lenses in Mission Impossible 4.
When those films came out, the technology they dreamed up was just that — a dream. No one really thought we’d one day be able to wear a pair of kicks that could tie themselves — although we shouldn’t have underestimated the human race’s capacity for laziness. Now, thanks to insanly-quick advances in the tech world, not only are we inventing more ways to merge our bodies with machines, we’re doing it in style.
Wearable tech is all the rage and for good reason. From wristbands that monitor your heart rate to sports jackets that let you make and answer calls to fabric that can literally heal itself and become stain resistant, fashion and tech are currently enjoying a pretty cool collaborative period – think Jay-Z and Kanye when Watch The Throne came out.
While it’s nice to be able to morph our bodies and the clothes we wear with the latest in electronics, wearable tech is more than just trendy, it has the real potential to save lives and advance the human race. If becoming bionic, living longer, and looking futuristic as hell while doing it sounds like a good time, read on for how fashion tech is becoming a literal life changer:
Wearables and Modern Medicine
When you think of wearable technology, wristbands that track heart rates and steps taken during the day probably come to mind. Wearable tech began as a way for consumers to become more active in measuring their own body responses. Thanks to Fitbit, we all now have that one annoying friend who likes to remind you of how many stairs they’ve climbed in a day. These devices allow people to see, in real time, how their bodies react to certain environments and activities, and so, in that sense, wearable tech and medicine have always been closely linked. (They can also turn a normal person into a closeted hypochondriac, but that’s neither here nor there.) Now new inventions are pushing the boundaries of what fashion can do when it comes to saving lives.
From Apple watches that monitor for early signs of heart disease to shirts that track seizure activity in epileptic patients, technological fashion has become, quite literally, a lifesaver. With sensors designed to monitor biological functions, designers are able to create shirts, watches, belts, hell even underwear that can track where we go, what we do, and how we feel doing it. In short, wearable tech is putting the power back in the hands of the people by giving them more information about their own lives.
A young boy in Mexico made the news recently after creating a prototype of a bra that could detect signs of breast cancer in women. His wasn’t the first, and most doctors are skeptical of technology that relies on heat sensors to detect blood flow and predict possible tumor sites, but the invention still services a need in a country where getting a simple mammogram can be a lengthy and difficult process.
Verily, a research organization that was formerly part of Google X, has been working on contact lenses that could detect glucose levels in diabetic patients. The smart lenses might mean a less bloody (and painful or expensive) way to track insulin levels but they’re also supposed to be able to improve eyesight.
And then there’s the wearable tech that’s hoping to improve the lives of people suffering from serious disabilities. At Microsoft’s recent Build Conference, the company unveiled the Emma Watch — a wristband that helps Parkinson’s patients minimize tremors by supplying a constant vibration that helps them control their motor reflexes. The pulses help to keep the wearer’s body from basically fighting itself, distracting the part of the brain trying to keep the muscles from moving.
If all of this is starting to sound like the backdrop of a future sci-fi film, then Emotiv — a private bio-informatics company currently working on their own version of Cerebro — should really freak you out. The firm is currently creating neuroheadsets, basically mind-controlled machines that measure and quantify your brain’s activity. The headsets can detect everything from facial expressions to mental commands and they’re being marketed to paraplegics as a way to engage with the world through their cerebral reflexes.
But it’s not just futuristic helmets and electronic contact lenses that are dominating the wearable world. For some, going naked is the next wave in technology.
The E-Skin Revolution
You know what’s better than carrying around the latest smartphone or wearing an Apple Watch? Having that same technology embedded in your skin. We haven’t fully reached Total Recall level yet – there are some serious issues with that handphone Colin Farrell’s character wore in the film, mainly why it would have a ten-digit keypad – but we’re definitely close.
E skin, or wearable technology for your skin, is getting plenty of attention right now and if you think about our priorities as a society, it kind of makes sense. Why lug around laptops, tablets, and smartphones when you can just house them on the biggest organ of your body? As terrifying as it might be to one day see humans transform into their own walking billboards, wearing emojis on their sleeves and status updates on their foreheads, there are some real benefits to being able to incorporate technology into our organic matter.
Last year, L’Oreal unveiled a stretchable skin sensor aimed at detecting UV radiation. My UV Patch was the perfect example of a high-end brand’s attempt to market wearable tech to the masses. The patch was meant to help consumers educate themselves about sun protection by monitoring UV rays using photosensitive dyes that changed color when a person experienced too much sun exposure.
The problem with E skin is in its life expectancy. Up until now, most skin tech has been plastic or rigid, not able to stretch and bend with the body’s movements. And if it survived movement it almost never survived a wash.
Fortunately, scientists are hard at work on the problem. Last year, researchers in Japan had a breakthrough, creating a thin, flexible film intended to provide electronic displays. Just a few micrometers thin, the patch is also resistant to air and water exposure, meaning it can last several days, not hours. What this could mean for a real world application is still a mystery. Doctors might use it to easily and quickly monitor blood flow and heart rates in patients. Or the rest of us could use it to convey our emotions visually – one of the researchers, University of Tokyo Professor Takao Someya, said he envisions it being the next step in the way people communicate with one another.
Safety Guaranteed
E skin might be our way of fulfilling sci-fi fantasy dreams of becoming life-size bionic social media feeds, but wearable tech has the ability to serve a nobler — or at least more practical — purpose. No hate to anyone who would rather have the ability to scroll through Instagram literally in the palm of their hands, but there are some overachieving heroic scientists out there that see a potential for fashion and technology to actively save lives.
If wearable tech in medicine is geared towards prevention — monitoring stats and alerting you to your body’s changes – protective wearable tech is hoping to be able to save lives in a different way.
We’ve all probably read the story of the four North Carolina State University students who invented a nail polish that was able to identify drugs in a cocktail. Marketed as “Undercover Colors,” the wearable tech turned colors anytime a foreign substance (particularly a sedative) was detected in the user’s drink.
Smart nail polish isn’t the only fashion trend in wearable tech though. Kingii created an inflatable wristband to combat the rising rate of deaths by drowning. The band has a lever that swimmers can pull to inflate an orange pouch with carbon dioxide, letting them keep at least their heads above water until help arrives.
Late last year, a man in San Marco’s Texas almost lost his life to a heart attack. Roger Hunt was suffering from congestive heart failure when an episode hit. The attack lasted for 33 seconds and could’ve ended up taking his life, but a piece of wearable tech stopped that from happening. The Zoll LifeVest was prescribed to Hunt by his cardiologist when he first began having issues. The wearable defibrillator measures the activity of a patient’s heart, sending updates to doctors so that they can monitor their patients’ vitals. If a wearer of the vest experiences a cardiac event, it sends a shock to the person’s back and left side basically stopping a heart attack in its tracks.
The truth is, fashion and technology are newlyweds. There’s potential for a lasting relationship – they each have their strengths that balance out the other’s weaknesses – and our society, as a whole, is obsessed with both of them. Still, there’s a long road to go before their relationship matures.
The boom in wearable tech is only going to get bigger. What was a $14 billion industry in 2016 is expected to jump to a $34 billion industry by 2020. People like being in charge of their own bodies. Maybe that’s monitoring their heart rate during a workout, maybe it’s wearing a nail polish that protects them from sleazebags, maybe it’s wearing a suit that detects air pollution, maybe it’s having the ability to communicate and entertain themselves readily available on their skin – whatever the itch is, wearable tech will be able to scratch it one day… And probably sooner than you think.
