EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

Wearable devices offer easy, fun and trendy ways to track your sleep, fitness, mood, and more. The menu of options is truly dazzling, and even includes the ability to order groceries from your wrist.

Consumers pump an astounding 20 billion into the wearable device market per year. In 2018, tech companies produced roughly 125 million smartwatches, an 8.5% increase as compared to the number of smartwatches produced in 2017. The market for wearables is thriving, and is predicted to continue ramping up at a rate of 13% annually.

Despite the market’s profitable growth, this innovative fashion trend comes at a cost.

One group believes that doctors will soon be able to use smartwatch data to identify at-risk patients, and to help people overcome certain health issues. But as ZDNet points out, when “…wearables become part of patients’ treatment plans, device makers will look to make money by selling data generated by those wearing the devices, for example, selling data produced by the devices to insurance providers.”

Privacy concerns spark conversations about security concerns. Sensitive data stored on smartwatches (or anywhere else, for that matter) is to hackers what gold jewelry is to common thieves. The “…perception is that because it [the data] is tethered to a smartphone, that the security is already built in, but that is often not the case.”

Will lack of security mechanisms impede this industry’s rapid-fire growth? Opinions are still swirling, but as we saw with the adoption of the internet in the 1990s, as tech matures, oversight and ecological advances are likely to occur as well.

Get the full story at ZDNet.