Public Health Matters: A Review of Upcoming Digital Health Technology Products

Host Dr. Christina Madison led a special edition episode that reviewed wearable technology and AI assisted technology that was displayed at the 2024 Consumer Electronics Show (CES). The products included health technologies that could provide patients with the best and optimal care. Madison emphasized a bright future for wearable technology, remote monitoring, and assistive technology in the health care field.

Christina M. Madison, PharmD, FCCP, AAHIVP

Hello everyone, and welcome to a special edition of the Public Health Matters podcast with your host, me, Dr. Christina Madison, also known as the public health pharmacists.

On today's special episode, I will be reviewing all the amazing things that I saw at this year's Consumer Electronics Show. For those of you who may not be familiar with CES, CES is turning 100 this year— so it's been around for a long time. It is the premier conference for all things tech, and they have a whole special session just on health tech and digital health.

I was lucky enough to be able to go this year, and there was a lot of very exciting things. I will say that this year's number one theme was wearable tech, and AI assisted tech. Everything was smart this and smart that because the key here is utilizing artificial intelligence to enhance things that we already do, but to make it easier, and to make it more seamless. Then also to collect data that could be reported to a health care professional or could be done remotely. So those are the big themes that arose from this year’s CES.

I do want to go through some of the cool things that I got a chance to see and hopefully, I'll be able to provide you with a little bit of some video clips that I took while I was at the conference.

The first thing is something called Vivoo, which was an at home urine test. So, you could test for many different thing— you could test for ketones, and you could test for infections, like UTIs. The cool thing is that everything is done at home and it's all color coded. You could basically see what your challenge was right from the comfort of your own home. You don't even have to leave anywhere, you can get that system and you can do everything at home, which was cool.

The next thing that I saw that I thought was interesting was this brand called MyHixel. It was all around male sexual health and basically, it's another AI assisted technology. It’s an app, as well as a personal lubricant that can be used all around men sexual health, and what they call climax control. So, I thought that was interesting.

Another thing that I thought was cool was something called Neurologic. This is a video-based health and wellness measurement solution. Again, allowing people to be able to do a lot of health-based monitoring virtually, and sending data to their health care professional.

Another really cool thing that I saw was this brand called Bodylog. This brand won one of CES's 2024 Innovation Awards. This is a wearable tech that you can wear on your chest, and it monitors your EKG, it also monitors your heart, and you can use it while you sleep. The other really cool thing about this wearable tech is that if somebody has a fall or an injury, it will measure the before and after of the person in recovery. That's something that I thought was really interesting, because a lot of times, EMS will come after someone's had some sort of health-related event, but they don't know what happened. This wearable tech will tell them what happened before, during and after their medical emergency. That really is helpful, especially in identifying the root cause of some of these challenges, as well as potential monitoring and alerting of emergency medical personnel, especially in the elderly, or somebody who has a chronic medical condition that limits their mobility.

Another really cool thing that I saw, which I was not really aware of is again, going back to this thought process with wearable tech is this device it's called WIM. So, it's a WIM robotic, and it's by WiRobotics, and this company is out of based out of Korea. This product is all around helping people with limited mobility. It is a form of exoskeleton that helps people so that they can walk. And not only that they can walk if they need to, that they can get upstairs. It can help with resistance training, so it can help with people who maybe have been deconditioned or are dealing with medical frailty. I thought that this was really cool. Not only did I get to see this particular device in person, but I was chatting with one of the representatives about how it helps with your gait, and she was telling me that Stevie Wonder came by the booth and tried it on. I have a small video clip of Stevie Wonder using this device, which I thought was just so cool. Get to give you guys a little bit of a sneak peek at that.

Some other things that I saw that were just what I would just consider to be really cool, but had nothing to do with health necessarily. There was this really cool company called HyperVSN, that basically does a 3D hologram of you. If you've ever wanted to clone yourself, this is a really cool thing. I was thinking I really wished I had cloned myself during CES because part of the week I was dealing with a respiratory cold. I know a lot of people were dealing with respiratory illnesses, which, before I forget, there was this company called Germ Pass that their big thing was that they are the fastest at killing germs, and in particular the virus that causes COVID 19. So, there was a lot around hygiene and cleaning surfaces, and that was also part of the digital health tech as well, was maintaining the hygiene of surfaces. So, like I said, that particular company was called Germ Pass.

So, the other thing that was the big hullabaloo at CES was these 4k wireless, transparent televisions. Most of them were very cool and they had an entire wall of these transparent TVs. Basically, you can see through them when you don't want the TV on, and then when you do want the TV on, it comes up for you, which is pretty cool.

Then the last thing that I would say that I saw that was probably one of the coolest things at CES was a flying car. Hyundai released their new flying car at CES. There were a lot of automotive, different things that they talked about, but I think the biggest thing is safety. Which again, going back to public health, and things that we talk about when you think about public health are safe roads, seatbelts, sidewalks for people and so I think it's really awesome that in addition to the EV revolution, which will help with our environment and our air quality, is the fact that they are building a lot of these new cars that are more safe and are AI assisted.

Some of them even have basically a Siri for their car. Mercedes Benz has an internal assistant which is an AI assistant and she'll do pretty much anything for you which is really cool. I have a small video clip of that as well, that you guys can take a look at.

All right, so one last device that I want to discuss for my special CES edition of my Pharmacy Focus podcast series for Public Health Matters is wearable tech, specifically wearable glasses. I'm going to show you guys a clip of me wearing these glasses and this is by a company called LetinAR or artificial reality. The thing that was so cool about this particular device is that you could actually see people's imaging. I could see an EKG, I could see a chest X ray, and I could see a CT scan. It was pretty incredible. And if you think about one of the rates limiting steps for health care, one of them is getting back your diagnostics and being able to review people's imaging after they've gone and gotten their diagnostics done. This really would potentially allow for this to be done almost in real time, as someone is getting that imaging conducted. It would really make for, I would think quicker diagnostics, as far as like finding out what someone's underlying disease state is, getting them quicker access to treatment, and hopefully more equitable access to treatment. Again, wearable tech was pretty much everywhere at CES this year. But this particular one I thought was really cool, because not only can you use it for something like medical imaging, and you can see someone's EKG, but it also goes back to basically like you're wearing regular glasses. I think Google Glass tried to do this about 10 years ago, and didn't quite make the mark, but this particular company, LetinAR seems to really have made some inroads into this arena. So, I hope you guys like seeing a little clip of me wearing this device, I thought it was pretty cool.

With that being said, I hope you guys appreciate this kind of special issue. Just know that a lot of the products that I talked about are in their development stages or are in the process of being released. I would say a majority of the products are either going to release this year or early 2025, because this is really a sneak peek at what the latest in technology is in health-related tech.

Again, my key takeaways are that it's all about wearable tech and being able to transmit information about your health data to your health care professionals so that they can provide you with the best and optimal patient care. Also being able to do remote monitoring, so this is a big thing in the diabetes space. But now we're looking at other ways to do remote patient monitoring — so big thing in the wearable tech space. And then also assistive technology, so for people with either disabilities or chronic illness or difficulty ambulating. Again, I think the future is bright when it comes to health tech, and I am really excited that I got an opportunity to go to this year's event and I can't wait to go to the next one.

Thanks everyone, please comment and let me know what you think. I will go ahead and add some of the links to some of these companies so that you can check out the products. Stay tuned for more episodes. This is the first episode of my third season with Pharmacy Times, Pharmacy Focus podcasts and again, my name is Dr. Christina Madison, also known as the public health pharmacist and remember Public Health Matters.