Roundtable No°7 | 2023: Medical Smartwaches

Note: The next roundtable will take place on December 14 on the topic of "Reflection and Vision: Two years of the Patient Monitoring Roundtable in focus". If you are interested, please register here.

"Medical smartwatches - the future of intersectoral patient monitoring?" We addressed this question together with Masimo at this year's seventh Patient Monitoring Roundtable. After a review of the take-home messages from the roundtable on telemedicine in May, Martin Bukowski gave an opening statement on wearables in his role as senior clinical scientist. This gave us exciting insights into the "quantified self", relating both to the cultural phenomenon of the need for self-tracking and to a community of users and manufacturers of self-tracking tools who share an interest in "self-knowledge through numbers''. It quickly became clear how many of us are already (unknowingly) part of this development and how important it is in society, although the role of the medical establishment cannot yet be clearly defined.

The introduction was followed by a presentation of the W1 medical watch by Masimo, which is approved as a medical device in contrast to other smartwatches. After splitting up into smaller groups for the hands-on session, the participants were able to measure their own vital signs and intuitively test the functions. It became clear that the possible area of application depends in particular on the individual requirements and patient-specific necessary parameters. An application in the outpatient monitoring of chronically ill patients could be a useful area of application here.

We would like to thank all participants and partners who contributed to this informative and insightful roundtable. We look forward to welcoming you again on December 14 at Virchowweg 9 (Charité Campus Mitte) at our end-of-year event!

The Patient Monitoring Roundtable is organized and conducted by INCH e.V. (Initiative for Innovation and Collaboration in Healthcare e.V.) in cooperation with the Institute for Medical Informatics at Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin.