What is Important for Consumers in Wearable Medical Device (WMD) Usage Intention?

Abstract

The global wearable medical device (WMD) sector has been alluring for businesses with a market value of $13 billion in 2019 and is expected to witness an annual growth rate of 27.9% by reaching $93.19 billion in 2027. Rising demand for advanced and continuous monitoring products fueled by health consciousness is encouraging people to adopt wearable medical devices. Due to high pervasiveness of lifestyle-associated disorders, such as diabetes and hypertension; continuous monitoring of several physiological parameters such as blood sugar levels and blood pressure have been required. WMDs allow merging of healthcare data with portable devices, which can be forwarded to physicians for real-time access to data with minimal errors. Furthermore, focus on personalized monitoring and care is demanded, since rising mortality rates due to non-communicable diseases are a major concern. Therefore, it becomes crucial to understand the role of data privacy related issues on the intention to use WMDs. This study aims to explore the impact of perceived benefits of WMDs, data accuracy of WMDs, and trust in the medical provider who has access to the health data collected by the WMD on intention to use WMDs. It is revealed that perceived benefits and data accuracy both have significant impact on usage intention of WMDs while trust in the medical provider does not have such an effect. These findings have crucial implications regarding the relation amongst patients/users, medical providers and WMD producers.

Keywords

• healthcare
• wearable health technology
• wearable medical device