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ZDNET’s key takeaways
- Wearable health tech could one day detect breast cancer.
- MIT is developing a device that monitors the condition and anomalies.
- The device is radiation-free, non-invasive, and accurate within seconds.
Wearable health technology is expanding beyond smartwatches and fitness trackers — it could one day detect and address conditions like breast cancer, according to MIT Media Arts and Sciences Associate Professor Dr. Canan Dagdeviren
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Dagdeviren specializes in flexible devices that can be laminated to areas of the body, whether that’s skin, breast, or even the brain. On a recent segment with Bloomberg, Dr. Dagdeviren discussed a breast cancer monitoring device her team is working on. These devices take biological signals and turn them into electrical signals for condition interpretation and analysis.
The device is described as a wearable ultrasound patch that would screen for breast cancer outside of the doctor’s office.
She explains that the current standard of care for breast cancer screening is mammography, which she describes as a “painful” technology that doesn’t work perfectly, especially for those with higher breast density.
A non-invasive, more effective alternative
The device her team is developing, on the other hand, is radiation-free, non-invasive, and can detect anomalies in “subseconds,” The most aggressive phenotype of cancer, interval breast cancer, develops between mammography screenings. This delayed diagnosis decreases the survival rate by 22%, Dagdeviren said.
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The device collects lots of data through continuous wear and co-integrates with AI. These two factors allow it to estimate the progression of the anomaly or monitor how the condition is changing with medication. Dagdeviren says this can increase the survival rate up to 98%.
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Dagdeviren refers to biological signals like heart rate, respiration, or urinal activity as “biological language.” With the right tools, this language can then be translated to monitor conditions and create personalized interventions with the help of medical professionals.
Also: Can AI outdiagnose doctors? Microsoft’s tool is 4 times better for complex cases
MIT is currently conducting human trials with the device, and Dagdeviren hopes the technology will be available to consumers within four to five years.
AI and wearables
Wearable health technology, powered by AI integrations, continuously monitors a user’s health to possibly detect conditions as they arise. On a smaller scale, devices like smartwatches or smart rings have significantly improved their monitoring capabilities, and can even detect conditions such as sleep apnea, hypertension, or the early onset of illness.
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