Trying on Orthopedic Wearables: What We Learned from a Year of Data (LinkedIn article by Steven Lyman)
In my previous post, I discussed the power of wearable technology to transform orthopedics. I believe we’re on the cusp of a big breakthrough — a future where wearables send a steady stream of data to the cloud, so doctors can see how patients are progressing in real time and can spot troubling patterns before they become serious problems.
It’s coming, and it’s going to revolutionize how we measurement patient outcomes. But we have a ways to go. And to get there, we need to start testing the waters now, with the tools we have today.
A couple years ago, our team at HSS got our feet wet, seeing what we could learn about post-operative recovery using an ordinary smartphone. The results suggested great potential, as well as some limitations.
An Unexpected Opportunity
My research team is a curious bunch, and by 2014, we were already in the thick of another experiment: tracking our daily activity using our phones to get a sense of data accuracy and explore possible uses. Then we stumbled into an unexpected opportunity. One of our research assistants (who had been a collegiate water polo...
