Technological innovations has revolutionized healthcare. There is a shift towards prediction, diagnosis and monitoring of diseases paving way for self-tracking or self-monitoring.
People are getting serious about self-monitoring and tracking everything from what they eat, to how active and happy they are. Consumer technology has now advanced to the point of being compact and affordable enough, exploding into a plethora of shiny new gadgets.
An app a day can keep the doctor away!
We have apps & devices that tell us things almost instantly, which earlier you could discover only from a doctor in a hospital running lengthy tests. An increasing number of people are using personal gadgets to monitor their own fitness and health indicators, plus how they use their time, in order to improve well-being and personal efficiency.
The array of tools is vast enough to enable you track any health symptom, right from counting steps, floors climbed ,miles cycled, and calories consumed, to measuring all kinds of bodily functions like temperature, blood pressure, insulin, blood sugar, heart rate ,urine color and sleep patterns. It is estimated that in a few years, there will be around 170 million wireless devices tracking personal health around the world.
Instant Feedback – A great motivator
If you want to improve something, start by measuring it, or you won't see how to make a difference. The added appeal of today's self-tracking tools is that seeing the numbers so soon can be motivational: they reward you when you do well and they shoot you to do something when you feel lazy.
Importance of choosing the right self –tracking tool
While the growing trend in self-tracking is being embraced with enthusiasm by users and doctors alike, there is also concern that using a poorly designed monitoring tool, can worsen your health.
Because self-tracking gadgets and tools are available widely and without a prescription, home monitoring is an easy step you can take to improve your health condition. Before you get started, it's important to find and choose the right gadget.
If you're not careful, you could end up spending a lot of money on a lot of gadgets that end up as a pile of expensive hardly-used equipment.
Stay tuned for tips on choosing the right self – monitoring tools in our next blog.