In the right hands, wearables could revolutionise healthcare

We spoke to Prof Amitava Banerjee, a cardiologist and clinical data scientist, to better understand how smartwatches and fitness trackers could change medicine

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For years now, smartwatches from various brands have allowed you to track your health and wellness. They let you count your steps, check your heart rate and set reminders to stand up now and then or, if you somehow forget, they'll give you a gentle nudge to breathe.

But recently, the likes of Apple, Withings and Fitbit have begun to move from wellness to more detailed health analysis. You can perform an ECG, monitor for irregular heart rhythms and, most recently, measure your temperature to track ovulation.

These advances take health tracking into a new, grey area. As well as providing basic measures of fitness and performance, they're now starting to gather the kind of data that could be used to predict illnesses or health issues.

In fact, companies including both Apple and Fitbit have already been involved with studies to see if their trackers can be used as diagnostic tools.

So can your new health-tracking smartwatch spot an abnormality simply by keeping an eye on your heart rate and activity levels? And, more importantly, can this information be used to inform a conversation with your doctor? We spoke to Prof Amitava Banerjee, a cardiologist and professor of clinical data science, to find out...

CAN BIG TECH AND DOCTORS COLLABORATE?

"Until any device, algorithm, or statistical model has been externally validated and I've seen the data or it's in the public domain, I can't trust the producer of the watch to tell me that it's going to make my health better. There needs to be published data, ideally from clinical trials," says Banerjee.