The Rise of Wearable Recording Devices

Abstract

We in medicine have chosen a visual profession. What happens when our vantage point of the patient can be frozen, zoomed, stored, and shared? Hands-free recording equipment, such as Google Glass, has been used in sports, combat, and the arts, to convey scenes which could not be captured by smartphones or other older recording equipment. If brought to the medical field, clinicians could use this technology to record their care "in the moment" without directing attention away from the patient. By dramatically lowering barriers to the collection of visual information, wearable computing will affect 3 key aspects of our health system. First, it will increase the granularity of our quality improvement initiatives; second, it will transform our redundant and wasteful consultation process; and third, it will bring us closer to capturing our true state of health in electronic records. These potential benefits will be coupled with potential risks, such as a loss of privacy. A thoughtful discussion concerning standards in applying these emerging devices is urgently needed.