Embedding Passive Monitoring Into Global Health and Longitudinal Patient Care

A multitude of digital health tools have been developed to monitor, record, and predict health-related events in healthy subjects and patients. In clinical settings, although promising advances have resulted in near-term benefits, their use in longer-term studies is often limited due to the level of friction and burden imposed on the subject, often requiring active engagement by the patient with digital devices and/or its interfaces. Herein, we outline how smart ring technologies could form the anchor point for passive patient monitoring systems by offering a near-ideal compromise between device form factor and data capturing capacity. By using wireless technologies, such devices could form integral components of a hub-and-spoke health monitoring system, feeding data to cloud-based patient electronic health records and allowing push–pull actions through bidirectional communication. Such capabilities could have immediate utility in the longitudinal monitoring of patients diagnosed with slow progressing disease such as cardiovascular and neurodegenerative conditions. Moreover, if integrated through provisioned federated wireless networks, the technology could become components of global health care. To be successful, such a grand challenge would naturally require multiple technological, financial, and data privacy obstacles to be overcome. In support of this vision, we outline practical considerations for the development of such systems for specific applications and potential next steps for implementation.