Posted 16th December 2024
Posted by Melissa Hartley
The Hidden Costs of Inaccurate Sensors in Wearable Health Tech
Wearable technology has become a cornerstone of modern health monitoring, offering users insights into fitness, vital signs, and general well-being. Despite this promise, the hidden costs of inaccurate sensors often undermine these benefits, impacting not only individual health but also broader business operations, healthcare systems, and industry innovation. Addressing this issue requires precision-driven solutions capable of transforming the reliability of wearable health technologies.
The Cost of Inaccuracy in Health Wearables
At the surface, a smartwatch or fitness tracker that occasionally miscounts steps may seem harmless. However, in health-critical applications, inaccuracies can carry far-reaching consequences:
- Development Costs for Businesses
For wearable developers and investors, inaccuracies often mean additional technical debt. According to a McKinsey study, CIOs surveyed say technical debt represents as much as 20 – 40% of their entire technology estate. Other studies found engineers may waste as much as 40% of their time on resolving technical issues. Technical debt means teams spend more time refining flawed systems or managing product recalls, delaying time-to-market and increasing costs. In industries striving to meet tight deadlines, such setbacks can be a significant burden.
- Health Risks for Users
Inaccurate monitoring of vital metrics such as blood pressure or hydration can result in missed health warnings. A recent study on blood pressure monitoring found that smartwatch-based systems often demonstrate insufficient accuracy, making them unsuitable for clinical use without frequent recalibration. For users managing chronic conditions like hypertension, such errors can jeopardise their health outcomes.
- Loss of User Trust
When devices fail to deliver accurate results, consumer confidence erodes. Users expect wearables to provide actionable data they can rely on. Repeated inaccuracies ultimately lead to product abandonment and negative reviews, stifling adoption rates across markets.
- Increased Costs for Healthcare Systems
Inaccurate wearables create false positives or negatives, leading to unnecessary hospital visits, tests, or missed interventions. Healthcare providers, already stretched thin, struggle to rely on data generated by inconsistent sensors.
- Regulatory Hurdles
Health wearables that claim medical-grade functionality must pass rigorous regulatory approval processes. Inaccurate sensors risk rejection by authorities like the MHRA or FDA, forcing developers to redesign their technology at considerable expense.
Why Inaccuracy Persists in Wearable Technology
The core issue lies in the limitations of conventional sensors used in wearables today. These technologies—primarily optical, electrical, and motion-based sensors—rely on surface-level data to infer health metrics. Key challenges include:
- Surface-Only Monitoring: Optical and electrical sensors only measure superficial data, such as skin movement or surface blood flow, without penetrating deeper tissues.
- Environmental Sensitivity: Variables like skin tone, temperature, or sweat significantly affect sensor performance, creating inconsistent readings across different users.
- Form-Factor Constraints: Miniaturising sensors for small, flexible devices often reduces their resolution and sensitivity, leading to lower-quality data.
Because precision and consistency are crucial to user experience and brand reputation, solving for inaccuracies is a critical business need.
The Role of Ultrasound: A Path to Precision
Addressing the inaccuracy problem requires advanced sensing technologies that can deliver deeper insights without sacrificing form or function. Ultrasound, long trusted in clinical diagnostics, is emerging as a transformative solution for wearable health tech.
Here’s why ultrasound outperforms conventional methods:
- Deep Tissue Insights
Ultrasound sensors can measure metrics such as blood pressure, hydration, and tissue health beneath the skin’s surface. Unlike optical systems, ultrasound penetrates deeper to deliver clinically relevant, reliable data.
- High Resolution in a Compact Form
Modern ultrasound technology, particularly thin-film sensors, allows for high-resolution imaging in compact, flexible formats. This innovation makes ultrasound ideal for integration into wearables like smartwatches or patches.
- Reduced Environmental Interference
Ultrasound is less affected by external variables like skin tone or sweat, ensuring consistent performance across diverse user groups.
- Cost-Effective Scalability
Thin-film ultrasound sensors, such as those developed by Novosound, can be manufactured at scale using efficient additive processes. This scalability ensures that next-generation wearables remain accessible to mass markets.
The Business Case for Accurate Sensors
For businesses and investors, addressing sensor inaccuracy represents more than just a technical fix—it’s an opportunity to unlock substantial value across markets:
- Reduced Time-to-Market: By integrating reliable, high-resolution sensors early in the development process, companies can avoid costly redesigns and accelerate regulatory approval.
- Enhanced Market Position: Devices that offer clinically reliable data differentiate themselves in a crowded market, building stronger customer trust and loyalty.
- New Revenue Streams: Accurate sensors enable wearables to expand into medical applications, creating opportunities for partnerships with healthcare providers and insurers.
- Lower Long-Term Costs: Reducing technical debt, recalls, and regulatory roadblocks saves significant resources, improving profitability over time.
Looking to the Future: Collaborative Innovation
The challenges facing wearable health technology—accuracy, scalability, and integration—require a collaborative approach. Emerging technologies like flexible ultrasound sensors provide a clear path forward, but their implementation depends on strong partnerships between developers, manufacturers, and investors.
Companies like Novosound are helping to bridge this gap. By leveraging thin-film ultrasound technology, wearables can deliver high-resolution, reliable health data in flexible, scalable formats. This innovation not only solves the accuracy challenge but also opens doors to new applications in both consumer wellness and clinical care.
The Cost of Inaction
The hidden costs of inaccurate sensors—health risks, lost trust, and increased operational expenses—are too significant to ignore. As the demand for wearable health tech grows, so too does the need for precision, reliability, and scalability.
Advanced sensing solutions like ultrasound offer a clear answer, enabling wearables to deliver on their full promise: improving individual well-being, empowering healthcare providers, and driving innovation across industries. For developers and investors, the time to act is now—because inaccuracy, as we’ve seen, comes at a cost too great to bear.
Ready to see what advanced accuracy looks like? Schedule a demo at CES 2025 to see for yourself how Novosound is changing the game in the wearables industry.