Making the world a healthier place through the growing availability and use of digital healthcare technologies is fundamental to successful health outcomes now and in the coming decades. From fitness and wellness tracking to personal health monitoring and remote patient monitoring, Bluetooth® technology is helping to create a world where living a heathier life is within reach of everyone.
Recently, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG), with support from ABI Research, released new market research that looks at how Bluetooth® technology is playing a central role in empowering wellness and personal care through a range of well-being wearables and dedicated personal and remote patient monitoring devices.
The following is an excerpt from that report, Wireless well-being: How Bluetooth® technology is at the heart of healthcare transformation.
Supporting wellness without wires
ABI Research forecasts that, in total, Bluetooth® enabled smartwatches, activity trackers, smart clothing, and smart rings are forecasted to reach over 387 million annual device shipments by 2030. Thanks to its low power consumption, ability to support small form factors, and widespread presence in smartphones, Bluetooth connectivity is uniquely positioned to support wireless well-being for everyone.
Fitness and wellness tracking
Bluetooth® technology has enabled the availability of a wide range of afforbable, over-the-counter (OTC) wearable devices, including smartwatches, fitness bands, and smart rings, that are capable of monitoring multiple fitness and wellness metrics. These include the ability to measure activities, heart rate, sleep quality, stress levels, blood oxygen levels, and skin temperature, among other variables.
Smartwatches
By 2030, nearly 250 million Bluetooth® enabled smartwatches are expected to ship annually. These devices offer the ability to track an increasing number of health metrics, enabling continuous monitoring and real-time synchronization with Bluetooth® enabled smartphones and health apps. This allows users to stay proactive about and optimize their fitness goals and activities, have better visibility into their overall health, make informed lifestyle and care decisions, discover potential health issues, and help prevent any existing issues from worsening.
Activity and health trackers
In addition to smartwatches, thanks to the low-power capabilities of Bluetooth® technology, these wearables can come in increasingly small form factors while offering impressive battery lifespans, enabling users to wear them continuously to receive more precise insights, whether exercising, working, relaxing, or sleeping. For example, some of the latest Bluetooth® wrist-worn activity and health trackers are designed to be worn 24/7 and support a 14-day battery life while capturing data points every single second.
Smart rings
In recent years, Bluetooth has enabled a new category of smart ring devices. Thanks to their small form factors, these devices can support more discreet tracking of various activities and health metrics while still supporting up to a week of battery life on average. ABI Research expects this to be one of the fastest-growing segments for wearable devices, achieving a 27 percent CAGR between 2025 and 2030, with annual shipments expected to reach over 70 million units by 2030.
Increasingly, these wearable devices are blurring the lines with dedicated health monitoring devices, adding new capabilities and receiving clearances, such as atrial fibrillation (AFib) detection, from organizations such as the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Personal health and remote patient monitoring
Bluetooth® technology enables a wide range of personal healthcare devices (PHDs) and remote patient monitoring (RPM) solutions — from continuous glucose monitors (CGMs) to respiratory health devices — that empower users to manage chronic conditions independently. These medical-grade devices are capable of sharing real-time health data with healthcare providers for better telehealth and remote care, ensuring that healthcare providers have access to up-to-date patient information to deliver timely, personalized care.
Continuous glucose monitors (CGMs)
In recent years, there has been a rapid expansion in the availability of Bluetooth® continuous glucose monitors. According to ABI Research, tens of millions of Bluetooth® CGMs are already shipping annually, and with the recent availability of over-the-counter (OTC) solutions, this is likely to accelerate further in the coming years.
These devices can provide 24/7 monitoring of blood sugar levels to help users with diabetes manage their symptoms more effectively, provide better visibility into trends and patterns throughout the day and night, receive alerts when levels are too high or too low, and share this information with healthcare providers.
Insulin delivery systems
In addition to CGMs, Bluetooth® connectivity is being leveraged for diabetes management in the form of smart insulin pens and automated insulin pumps. Smart insulin pens connect via Bluetooth® technology to a mobile app to calculate the ideal insulin dose using glucose levels and carbohydrate estimates as well as automatically logging doses and sending reminders.
Several insulin delivery systems combine CGMs with smart insulin pumps to automatically adjust insulin delivery to prevent highs and lows and avoid the need to have multiple daily injections. These solutions can help ensure a higher time-in-range (TIR) percentage to reduce complications while also making management of their conditions considerably easier.
And the list goes on, from wearable electrocardiogram (ECG) devices to detect cardiac events, to blood pressure monitors, pulse oximeters, and other connected respiratory health devices.
Creating a healthier world
The examples given above are by no means an exhaustive list. New products are emerging regularly, and, with healthcare challenges expected to become more acute over the next few decades, the range of healthcare products will become even more diverse. While these are good initial steps, there is still much work to be done to support a healthier world. Product manufacturers continue to investigate the role Bluetooth® technology can play in enabling next-generation, connected, healthcare products and experiences as demand continues to grow.
To learn more about how Bluetooth technology empowers wellness and personal care, download the latest market research, Wireless well-being: How Bluetooth® technology is at the heart of healthcare transformation.
