Edin Deljkic is founder and CEO of Klika.
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The global wearables market is expected to reach $265.4 billion by 2026, driven by a CAGR of 18.0%. Over the past several years, wearables have seen significant advances, adding fitness features, health monitoring, virtual assistants and more.
Despite these advances there’s plenty of room for improvement—and AI is poised to give wearables more functionality and improved performance.
The Current Challenges
Thanks largely to the relative immaturity of the wearables market, there are a number of challenges the industry faces.
One of the biggest is the lack of a unified method to collect and process data. Each vendor has its own metrics, often resulting in slight differences in the data collected and how that data is interpreted.
Another challenge is battery life. While smartwatches have made significant advances in the features they provide, battery life still lags behind what many users want. For example, it is still largely impossible to use your smartwatch all day and then use it all night to monitor your sleep, since most models don’t yet provide 24 hours of use.
The Promise Of AI
True artificial intelligence promises to revolutionize the wearables market, much like many other industries. Companies are already throwing around the "AI" tag when describing their wearables’ features, but these features often include only rudimentary AI and basic algorithms. For the market to evolve to the next level, AI must transcend its current form and evolve to offer truly intelligent interaction.
For example, imagine how powerful your wearable could be if it came equipped with a true AI doctor, with full access to all the medical information and knowledge available. The AI could use the plethora of data your wearable collects, interact with you, ask questions, tap into its database of knowledge and provide more accurate diagnosis and assistance than many human doctors.
Issues Companies Need To Tackle
To achieve this level of interaction, companies developing AI must tackle a number of issues.
• Trust
AI "hallucinations," in which an AI model makes up responses, have become all too common in the industry. Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai underscored the extent of the problem when he said: “No one in the field has yet solved the hallucination problems. All models do have this as an issue.”
For AI to drive wearables into the next phase of their evolution, the technology must improve to the point that consumers can trust what the AI says, especially when dealing with something as important as health.
• Data Collection And Privacy
There are few types of data more sensitive and private than one’s health data. Unfortunately, some of the leading companies in the field do not have the best track record in the realm of privacy.
Consumers will need to be able to trust that their data is being collected accurately and that the data is being properly secured and protected. Companies will obviously want to use some of that data to improve diagnosis and AI performance, in which case there will need to be appropriate measures in place to anonymize the data and ensure consumer privacy.
• Battery Life
As mentioned at the outset, battery life remains one of the biggest challenges for companies. It’s not uncommon for medical monitoring devices to collect days of data uninterrupted, yet this goal is far outside the reach of current wearables.
As a result, battery technology—or device efficiency—must improve to the point that would allow a wearable to act as a true medical device.
A Wide Open Opportunity
The current wearable market is dominated by a few major players: Apple; Google and their newly acquired Fitbit; Samsung and a few others. As with every new market, however, there are opportunities for smaller companies to make a name for themselves by tackling some of these pain points that the industry is currently grappling with.
In the months and years ahead, I believe that AI will transform the medical and wearables market, unlocking possibilities that were once squarely in the realm of science fiction. Companies that solve some of the above issues are the ones that will help usher in this new era.
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