In the latest issue of the journal PLoS Biology, an NIH-supported study offers an exciting glimpse of this future. Wearing a commercially available smartwatch over many months, more than 40 adults produced a continuous daily stream of accurate personal health data that researchers could access and monitor. When combined with standard laboratory blood tests, these data — totaling more than 250,000 bodily measurements a day per person — can detect early infections through changes in heart rate.

The study, led by Michael Snyder, a scientist at Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, grew out of a larger ongoing clinical research study that tracks adults who are healthy or pre-diabetic for genomic and biochemical clues into health and disease.

While it’s certainly possible to use them now to monitor many things, as this study shows, no FDA-approved medical apps are currently available for common wearables, such as smartwatches and more research is definitely needed.

Set to launch later this year, the Precision Medicine Initiative® All of Us Research Program, will aim to enroll a million Americans in a prospective study of health. Until then, reports like this one offer hope. They remind us that we’re getting closer to a new data-driven era when your smartphone could be your dashboard for everyday health maintenance.

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What do you think of using wearables to detect illness?

• It's the future of medicine.
• I would like to learn more.
• More testing is needed before I'll believe it.
• I don't have an opinion on the subject.