The future of wearables in health and wellness and how to design meaningful technology for the real world was discussed at the GIANT Health expo in London.

Discussions and presentations pondered how applications could be used in the NHS and the wider health and wellbeing industry as well as other current issues for wearable technology.

Stephen Hicks from Oxsight said that assistive technologies take a natural path of necessity, normalisation and aspiration. He added that form factor and cost can be tolerated if the value is high enough and that assistive technologies can be a platform technology beyond medical conditions if based on personalisation.

Craig Robertson from Epipole spoke about disruption and survival and noted that diseases and pathologies like retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) are inexpensive to treat but no screening is available and have lifelong consequences.

Katherine Church, funding lead at Thrive Wearables, said: “HealthTech is the new FinTech, that much is clear having spent two days with some of the smartest people I’ve come across for a long time. However, as we agonise over form function, design, and penetrating the NHS, companies like Epipole focus on stripping back the complexity, reducing the cost and making the technology available to some of the most deprived and isolated populations on the planet. Now that is truly inspirational.”

Panel discussions included: ‘Inspired by Experience: Designing Wearable for the Real World’ which heard stories of a rehabilitation wearable making it into the NHS, and a journey from GP to entrepreneur and angel investor. ‘How Do We Scale the Adoption of Wearable Tech to Deliver a Meaningful Impact?’ included discussion about emerging opportunities in wearables, with design and UX featuring as key topics.