Gadgetory

let's face it the way we keep track of our health these days is kind of like driving a car whose dashboard only works one hour a year that is literally the model of the annual checkup even Star Trek saw a better way over 50 years ago pervasive comprehensive monitoring of what's really going on with you right now we're on the cusp of that the omron heart guide this is the FDA's first ever approved blood-pressure machine that fits around your wrist it's in its final FDA approval phase right now going to market end of 2018 no prescription by the way now new blood pressure guidelines issued in early 2018 now mean that 46 percent of Americans have high blood pressure according to the American Heart Association that's up from 32 percent under the old decades-old standard the maladies high blood pressure leads to are almost too numerous to count but they don't call it the silent killer just to be dramatic that should tell you something now if you think you're good think again major studies have found that 18 to over 30 percent of us have what's called white coat hypertension in other words we only exhibit high blood pressure in the doctor's office perhaps another 10 percent of us have masked hypertension we don't exhibit hypertension in the clinic but we do have it most of the rest of the time only constant monitoring can sussed these two out now let's turn to a little bit of sugar the Dexcom g6 is the latest of continuous glucose monitors knowing what your blood sugar levels are all the time you wear it for 10 days at a time and simply swipe your smartphone or a small dedicated reader over the thing to check or record your glucose momentarily to build a history or to alert family friends or clinicians about a crisis level you might be the Medtronic Guardian connect and the Abbott freestyle Libre round out this hot category and all are aimed at the idea that non diabetics will one day wear something like this to avoid becoming type-2 diabetic now check out the alivecor kardea band a band for an apple watch but it's actually a wrist worn electrocardiogram machine it's specifically designed to detect atrial fibrillation that's when your heart kind of flutters instead of beating smoothly and it's a key contributor to the future risk of stroke this band is said to be about 87% accurate at detecting afib and like other products we've looked at it's FDA cleared a live core and Imran who we just saw worked together their products can already create a single channel of information about your heart health for you or the clinician who would like to see it when something is outside the realm of normal the last healthy heart tech I'm going to show you today is one that is the most prospective and futuristic and yet you probably already have the devices you need to do it a groundbreaking study conducted at Mayo Clinic found the first evidence that your voice may be an accurate indicator of whether you have coronary artery disease 81 tonal features of voice were measured after patients spoke to a recording app using technology from a vocal biomarker company called beyond verbal upon further confirmation this study could open the door to you monitoring your circulatory system by just talking where does all this go next first these devices need to give us answers not just information and answers that motivate rather than overwhelm or discourage us secondly it'd be great to have a single dashboard of our health from many sensors hopefully without us having to wear many devices third make these technologies over-the-counter so we can wear them long before we supposedly need them this does however set up some tension between devices that keep us well and pharmaceuticals that fix us when we're not and fourth recognize that everything is a health signal from your smart home devices to your social graph we need to learn how to read those and integrate them with traditional medical indications to unlock the keys to truly personalized health for the first time