Testing wearable sensors as 'check engine' light for health

Wearable gadgets gave a Stanford University professor an early warning that he was getting sick before he ever felt any symptoms of Lyme disease.

Interest in wearable sensors is growing along with efforts to personalize medicine, as scientists learn how to tailor treatments and preventive care to people's genes, environment and lifestyle.

The Stanford team is collecting reams of data — as many as 250,000 daily measurements — from volunteers who wear up to eight activity monitors or other sensors of varying sizes that measure heart rate, blood oxygen, skin temperature, sleep, calories expended, exercise and even exposure to radiation.

[...] during the study's first two years, Snyder and several other volunteers had minor cold-like illnesses that began with higher-than-normal readings for heart rate and skin temperature — and correlated with blood tests showing inflammation was on the rise before any sniffling.

[...] the Stanford team detected variations in heart rate patterns that could tell the difference between study participants with what's called insulin resistance — a risk factor for Type 2 diabetes — and healthy people.

The findings in Thursday's report are intriguing but the study is highly experimental, cautioned medical technology specialist Dr. Atul Butte of the University of California, San Francisco, who wasn't involved with the research.