Wearable Health Devices for Kids

Finding the right device to help you monitor the health of your child

Monitoring Kids’ Health, Then and Now

If we could compare parenting nowadays to the era when our parents raised us…well, it’s impossible to do that experiment! However, our parents tell us stories of what it was like to take care of us, especially when we were sick. Back then, thermometers contained mercury, which has since been taken off the market given dangers of neurological toxicity if ingested. Man do I wish I didn’t chase that little metallic ball around on the counter with my fingertips every time one of these temperature gauges broke! But then I ask myself: did our moms ever really use a thermometer? Per my mom, it was obvious enough when one of her children had an illness of concern. We felt hot, and we were too tired to get out of bed. If mom needed to call the pediatrician or family doctor, she checked our temperature for completeness sake. And that… was about it. But alas, my siblings and I were healthy and my mom mostly stayed at home, so the stakes didn’t appear to be all that high. 

Well then, what happened back in the good ol’ days if a child suffered from a chronic medical condition that put him or her in serious danger of death if they got a serious infection? The short answer is: they lived in the hospital. Tools weren’t available that could detect a serious illness in enough time to help your child, so living outside of the hospital was essentially flirting with death. So children diagnosed with even the most common childhood cancer, acute lymphocytic leukemia, spent whatever life they had in a hospital bed. There are obviously many chronic conditions that children had back then, but few could be monitored reliably outside of the hospital, unfortunately. 

Needless to say, medical advancements have come very far in the past few decades. We now can promptly diagnose, treat, and even cure many chronic illnesses. However, given that increased survival and the expansion of our population, there are 18 million children living in the United States who carry the diagnosis of a chronic illness, including cancer, asthma, diabetes, epilepsy, chronic heart or lung disease, or having been born prematurely. Fortunately, our medical care has gotten so good that children with these conditions can live their lives almost completely outside of the hospital environment. Also, access to medical care has improved dramatically, especially for those living in urban and suburban settings. However, the lurking threat of life-threatening infections in children with chronic health conditions are still very real, and are felt by parents and children alike. How can we physicians support kids and caregivers in trying to live the most fulfilled lives possible while bearing the burden of these chronic medical conditions?

Unfortunately, the tools used to monitor children with chronic medical conditions at home are still extremely limited. Our thermometers may no longer contain mercury (amen!), and temperature can be taken with a multitude of different devices with varying accuracy. But aside from that, parents still have a massive lack of tools that give them accurate, actionable information to help guide the care of their children. And in the case of chronically ill children, when time is critical in diagnosing serious infections, this lack of tools can be the difference between life and death. 

Do I Need a Device to Help Monitor the Health of My Child?

For kids with chronic medical conditions, early detection of illness is on the forefront of their caregivers’ minds. And this is easier said and done. Very young children show very little to no specific indicators that they’re not well, aside from how hot/cool their skin feels, if their behavior is normal, and if their eating and drinking as they normally would. When caring for these youngsters (who generally are nonverbal or not very articulate), their parents may get some early nonspecific clues, and then they may spend hours to days trying to figure out if their child is actually sick or needs medical attention. All this time spent in trying to decode their kid’s health signals can mean valuable time loss in prompt diagnosis and management of a potentially serious illness. A device and monitoring platform, if accurate and easy to use, has the potential to streamline this process for caregivers, and give them objective, actionable information. This type of information can revolutionize how parents monitor their children and interpret their signs and symptoms. 

What Types of Wearable Devices are Available?

In general, wearable devices can be organized into medical devices, fitness devices, safety devices, and health devices. Medical devices require a prescription from your doctor and are intended to help manage specific medical conditions. These types of devices are outside the scope of this review and questions about these devices should be directed to your doctor. Fitness devices make up the bulk of wearable devices.These devices are intended to help users track their fitness activities. Safety devices are intended to help users monitor the location (via GPS) or accidental falls. Health devices are intended to help users monitor changes in health metrics.

What to Functions to Look for in a Wearable Health Device

Wearable health devices typically contain sensors which track specific health metrics. As the wearable device market has grown, so too has the number of sensors. Unfortunately, many of these sensors and health metrics do not provide valuable information regarding changes in health. 

For example, oxygen sensors have become a hot sensor to include in wearable devices, but their real-world utility is questionable at best. Oxygen sensors can require up to 5 minutes to obtain readings, and also requires the user to remain very still. Additionally, a major complaint for users of devices with oxygen sensors note false alarms (ie oxygen level reading falsely low) as a major product flaw. Finally, oxygen levels are one of the last health metrics to change in the setting of an illness or change in health, so they are poorly suited to detect early or acute changes in health.

Studies have consistently shown that changes in heart rate and/or temperature are the earliest and the most accurate metrics to detect changes in health.

 Watches, Socks, and Patches, Oh My!

Smart watch developers pioneered the wearable fitness trend. Watches are familiar to users and are able to track various fitness metrics. But as these devices are worn on the wrist, motion introduces significant “noise” which can interfere with the accuracy and reliability of the reported metrics. Most available fitness watches and their algorithms are designed for adults, so they cannot be used by kids. Smart socks were introduced a few years ago to help parents monitor the health and safety of their children. The most popular device includes oxygen monitoring, which when coupled with the expected normal movement of an infant, results in inaccurate readings, false alarms, anxiety and frustration. Health patches worn on the torso can accurately and reliably detect the most important metrics to changes in health, heart rate and body temperature.

What are Personalized Analytics and Why do They Matter?

Each person has their own “normals” when it comes to their vital signs. For example, a 40 year old female who lives a sedentary lifestyle may have an average heart rate of 80 beats per minute, with normal fluctuations of 50 beats per minute when getting up to walk or walking up and down stairs. Compare this to a 40 year old elite triathlete, who may have an average resting heart rate of 45 beats per minute, with fluctuations of 20 beats per minute with those same activities; a change of 50 beats per minute would be expected for the sedentary woman, but could be very abnormal for the triathlete. Similarly, these two female profiles will vary widely if they’re sleeping, driving, and everything else including how their bodies respond to illness. This example highlights how important it is to know the differences in a person’s normal variations, so that variations outside of their normals can be accurately detected. 

So, What Now?

If you take care of someone that has a chronic medical condition, or if you’re interested in monitoring the health status of a child, you may benefit from health monitoring. There are a variety of wearable devices available, but special attention must be paid to the accuracy of those devices, which biometrics they monitor, and the safety of the product for the person being monitored. Ideally, this would be using a device that monitors key vital signs such as heart rate and temperature with high accuracy, reliability and safety, with information displayed in a user-friendly platform. Also, having a monitoring platform that uses personalized analytics can be incredibly helpful, especially when monitoring children, who have vital sign normals and trends that vastly differ from adults. 

In the next few weeks, we’ll provide device and monitoring platform comparisons to show you the strengths and limitations of the kid-focused devices on the market right now. We’ll also share information about our wearable health device for kids, Syne, which is currently in development with an anticipated commercial release in Fall 2021. We hope this information helps you choose the best device and platform for monitoring the health of your loved ones. Please reach out to us with questions and comments, sign up on our website to receive product updates and discounts, and follow us on social media.