Who wants to stay long in hospital? The majority would most likely prefer to go home and have our health monitored by a smart device and only return to the doctor in case an alarm is triggered.
A smart wearable sensor is an example of the digital healthcare devices expected to become much more prevalent in near future. Researchers and industry partners behind a new European research project, DiCE, expect an exponentially increase in the use of these devices in the next decade.
83 million units of medical wearables were available on the European market in 2020, and the expected annual global growth rate could be as much as 20 percent by 2027.
This may be good for patients but challenging for the environment. Not least as wearable sensors are single use, so what will happen to them once they have been discarded? Most likely, according to the project description, the majority will end up in a landfill or an incinerator, which means that the plastic, metal, and rare raw materials used to produce them will be lost permanently.