Adopting Modern Fitness Sensors to Improve Patient Care

Technology found in modern fitness sensor devices advances at a very fast pace and current smartwatches are on the verge of closing the gap between being an everyday object and a medically reliable monitoring device. In this thesis, the possibility of adopting fitness sensor devices in medical environments is explored and use cases in which sensor devices can be deployed are examined. Their successful transfer from the area of sports to medical analyses and treatments may help patients to deal with their illnesses and to improve the level of patient care found today. Privacy and security issues as well as social concerns associated with such a disruptive evolution are discussed and practical tests of a pulse oximeter in various activities of daily living are conducted. The collected health data depicts a close representation of the performed activities. Furthermore, three types of fitness sensor devices were used in different real-life scenarios and the resulting data is compared. The results show that the recorded vital signs may differ significantly, depending on the scenario. iii