From early prototypes to future breakthroughs, wearable devices are poised to revolutionize women’s health research and treatment.
Rosalind Picard, Professor of Media Arts and Sciences; Grover M. Hermann Professor in Health Sciences and Technology; and director of the Affective Computing research group at the MIT Media Lab, spoke with Bloomberg Businessweek about wearable technology’s impact on women’s health. She described affective computing, which enables devices to sense and respond to emotion, and noted the Lab’s early development of wrist and ear-based sensors for heart rate and stress.
While women have long been excluded from medical studies, wearables now offer continuous, objective data on pain, sleep, and other conditions often overlooked. Picard emphasized that commercial products reflect only about 1% of what’s possible, with new Media Lab advances including conformable sensors for breast cancer detection.