In hospitals, full of beeping monitors and diagnostic equipment, we’re used to the idea of being surrounded by sensors. But with rising medical costs and new technologies, a second world of medical sensors has begun to pop up closer to home. Imagine being able to monitor vital rates and get personalized diagnoses through a small army of devices that you live around, wear, or even swallow. That’s the future some see for medicine, potentially allowing doctors to catch medical issues sooner and helping patients manage chronic disease. 

“Wearables”, for instance, are monitoring devices that you can wear in the same way you might wear a watch or a pin. The most well-known are simple fitness trackers that can measure things like physical activity and sleep. Other more specialized devices can, for instance, tell when their elderly owner falls, and send a notification to a caretaker. As these sensors gather more information and grow more sophisticated, wearables may even be able to catch illnesses at the earliest stages, before you would notice the symptoms yourself. 

The availability of data collected by wearables is exciting for some doctors and insurance companies—some companies will even offer money for data from wearable fitness devices. The downside? If such devices can in fact be used to diagnose illnesses, companies could in the future use this information to deny you insurance coverage. And since most fitness trackers use Bluetooth to pair with phones—and continue to emit a unique signal when you’re out and about—they could open you up to being tracked. This, however, is easily avoided. If you keep the device paired with your phone, it stops it from broadcasting a signal.  

Another consideration is that most of these applications and wearable devices aren’t bound by the US laws that govern security and privacy of health care data. That means it’s up to each individual company to figure out their own policies on how they use the data collected by their users’ devices (some have complied with these laws voluntarily). If that’s something that concerns you, it may be worth looking up the privacy policy of a company before you buy their wearable device. 

The future of medical sensors will likely be even more up-close and personal than wearable devices. Your doctor in the future may know whether you’ve been taking your medications thanks to a “smart” pillbox, or may get a notification when your blood pressure spikes. This kind of communication could help patients keep their chronic diseases in check. Another technology on the horizon are pills containing ingestible sensors, which could also keep doctors updated on whether their patients are taking their prescribed medicine. And sensors are already being embedded within implants to track healing processes. Devices like these will help make the medical care you receive more personalized to your own body and needs—but as they collect increasingly personal and sensitive data about our health, understanding just what information they’re collecting and where it’s sent will only become more important.