Forget the bitter pills, the painful injections, the endless waits in doctors' offices. The future of therapy could be much "lighter", more "discreet", more... how to say: wearable. Thanks to wearable therapy, our health care is about to enter a new era, characterized by personalization, prevention, and “friendly” technology.
Smart bracelets, patches, smart clothes, smart glasses and contact lenses, all equipped with advanced sensors and sophisticated algorithms, capable of constantly monitoring our health status and providing us with targeted therapies, in a non-invasive and continuous way. An ongoing transformation, which is taking place before our eyes (and, above all, on our wrists), and which promises to radically transform the way we take care of ourselves.
From fitness to therapy-tech: a surprising metamorphosis
It's 2026, imagine. A notification on your phone from your AI wellness coach. He, or she, or Thing, has analyzed the data from your therapy wearable and suggests the perfect menu and workout for today. Health goal? Achieved, with less stress and uncertainty. This is not the beginning of a novel by Aldous Huxley, but the possible trajectory that the world of wearable devices is taking.
Until now, we have known wearables mainly as training companions, digital pedometers, guardians of our sleep. Useful, certainly, but perhaps a little limited. Today, technology is accelerating its pace, transforming these small gadgets into real care tools. No longer just “trackers”, but devices capable of “acting”, of healing, of paving the way for us towards a fuller and more conscious well-being.
Think about Bryan johnson, champion of bio-tech and obsessed with the elixir of long life. He it defines itself “the most monitored man in history” and entrusts his health choices to a legion of data, churned out by a myriad of devices, including his trusty WHOOP. “WHOOP gives me a wealth of information about my well-being, from sleep to heart rate to physical performance,” he confided Johnson at the same Will Ahmed, the visionary founder of WHOOP. Of course, Johnson invests astronomical sums in his quest for eternal youth (2 million dollars a year): at a more accessible price, health wearables are seducing an ever-wider audience. The trend is unstoppable.
Pocket Batteries and Invisible Sensors: The Miniaturized Revolution
It all started sixty years ago with the manpo-kei, a gadget that encouraged everyone to take the famous 10.000 steps a day. From there, wearables have undergone an impressive evolution, from bulky objects with a single function to small concentrations of technology, capable of revealing precious secrets about our health, at costs and with a practicality that were unthinkable until recently. But the best is yet to come, thanks to increasingly high-performance batteries and miniaturized sensors.
One of the Achilles heels of today's wearables is battery. Who hasn't gotten impatient with having to constantly recharge their smart bracelet? Science is working to solve this problem, with the solid state batteries, smaller, more powerful and with ultra-fast charging, ready to land on our wearables as early as 2026, thanks to giants like TDK (supplier of Apple ) to Samsung.
And it doesn't end here
Amay Bandodkar, electrical engineering genius at North Carolina State University, created a revolutionary battery, activated… by sweat. A tiny power plant to be applied to the skin, capable of powering sensors to monitor the heart, skin pH and other parameters. And from Queensland University of Technology very thin films are coming that can transform body heat into electricity. Even movement could become energy, thanks to flexible “nanogenerators” fromUniversity of Surrey. Or the light (there is already a device that is powered by this, it's called Bheart). Imagine charging your wearable while jogging!
These smaller, more powerful batteries of the future open up new scenarios for increasingly discreet, versatile, and intelligent wearable therapy devices. Devices to be worn anywhere, capable of monitoring vital parameters that were unthinkable until yesterday. “I believe that in the future we will see wearables capable of measuring crucial biomarkers and collecting essential clinical data for increasingly precise diagnoses,” prophesies Bandodkar.
Wearable therapy: medicine is “on you”
I quote it from the beginning of the article, but I haven't dwelt on it yet: how can we define wearable therapy? It is (will be) the phase in which our devices will not only be sentinels of our health, but real care tools. Think of a "smart bandage" (perhaps one like the one just created by Bandodkar's team, with the support of DARPA). A hi-tech dressing that, thanks to micro-electric currents, accelerates wound healing by 30%.
But the potential of wearable therapy is limitless. Contact lenses that keep diabetes under control, mouthguard that analyze saliva for stress, T-shirts that “read” heart rate or sweat to prevent heat stroke. And not only diagnosis, but also active therapy: wearable capable of releasing drugs in a targeted manner, stimulate tissue regeneration or modulate brain activity to treat neurological and psychiatric disorders.
Some pioneers of wearable therapy are already here. PIVOT Yoga, for example, offers sensorized clothing to improve posture in yoga. Muse and other brands offer headbands that track brainwaves for relaxation and meditation. And then there's Adam Sensor, the smart ring that monitors nocturnal erections, a valuable indicator of cardiovascular and hormonal health. You put it on your finger, right?
The AI Coach: Your Digital Guardian Angel for Wearable Therapy
Data alone is not enough. For wearables to really help us feel better, we need someone to interpret them and guide us. This is why the convergence with artificial intelligence is the real factor that will mark the advent of wearable therapy. The aforementionedWHOOP, for example, has entered into an alliance with OpenAI to create a virtual coach based on the same technology as Chat GPT. A true digital guardian angel, always ready to answer our health questions, give us personalized advice and motivate us to achieve our wellness goals.
The Apple e Samsung are developing similar AI coaches for their wearables. The future that awaits us is a future in which we will have on our wrist not just a tracker, but a tiny virtual doctor, capable (perhaps) of taking us by the hand and guiding us towards a healthier life.
A future where medicine becomes proactive, personalized and accessible to all, thanks to the discreet magic of wearable technology. And perhaps, this future is closer than we imagine: we almost have it.
