Care Architectures for Wellness Management based on Wearable Technology: Issues for Systems Development

This paper reviews some of the implications of Wearable Technology applications in the management of wellness. 'Wearable Technology' is an emerging transdisciplinary field, bringing together concepts and expertise from a variety of disciplines, ranging from materials science, through computer engineering to textile design. We have yet to see significant exploitation of this technology in terms of the emergence of mass-market commercial products. In the healthcare sector, wearable devices could change the interface between citizen / patient and the health care provider by providing the ordinary citizen and/or his/her family with immediate biomedical feedback, permitting active self-management of wellbeing. Wearable technologies in combination with pervasive high-bandwidth communications environment are widely seen as key enabler technologies for the cost-effective management as well as prevention of certain medical problems. However, most research has focussed onto the development of device functionality, and whilst some attention has been given to the overall systems architecture within which the devices will function, little attention has been given to the design of “care architectures” within which some aspects of this problem will be discussed. The paper concludes by arguing for a human-centred 'whole-system' design of wearable life management devices, and discusses ways in which this might be achieved.