When it comes to technology smartwatches are taking a giant leap in providing medical benefits in our busy daily life. They seem convenient, complementary to phones, and on course of outsmarting phones. Recently Engineers at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering and their colleagues at Stanford School of Medicine have been able to track real-time medication levels inside the human body by simply using a smartwatch and integrated technology. This technology represents an important step in achieving personalized pharmacological therapy. So far Smartwatches have provided functions such as heart rate monitoring, fitness tracking, body temperature but underneath our body much more can be revealed for e.g if you are taking medication of some sort on which your health depends. To see why this technology can make a difference, it is important to understand how your GP prescribes medication. Generally, medication is prescribed with a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach, pharmaceutical companies produce drugs when they have on average statistically established their effectiveness. Medication prescription depends on factors such as age, weight, unique genetic makeup, diet. These parameters can affect how much medication is retained in our bodies, the absorption rate, the response time. Clearly a generic approach could be quite ineffective and often result in a repeated blood test in an effort to measure the effect of administered medication. The consequences are an increased cost of treatment, discomfort for patients, and compromising dosage.

A newer approach seems promising, a new technology aiming to detect a drug unique signature in body signal is definitely a game-changer. It means levels of medication in your body will be revealed by your smartwatch and can especially improve the effective dosage of medication which for many people will contribute to better health outcomes in particular for patients in need of long term pharmacological therapy such as mental health patients, diabetics, patients with chronic pain, etc… Very soon newer smartwatches could be integrating technology to monitor medication levels in view of achieving adequate dosage and improve the duration of drug therapies.