How Bluetooth® Technology Is at the Heart of the Personal Healthcare Transformation

Healthcare systems around the world are facing enormous challenges. Growing demands on healthcare services, rising costs, chronic underfunding, dated healthcare infrastructure, uneven provision, long-term backlogs, and wider impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic have all exposed an increasing number of frailties across the sector. To meet these growing challenges, various healthcare services around the world are continuing to increase their healthcare spending as a proportion of their Gross Domestic Product (GDP), an approach that is not sustainable in the longer term. Meanwhile, demographic shifts, including an aging population, many of which are living with serious health problems, are expected to place additional burdens on these already stretched healthcare services. Making the world a healthier place through the growing availability and utilization of digital healthcare technologies such as wearables, Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) and diagnostics devices, telehealth systems, more efficient healthcare facilities, and the creation of healthier environments will be fundamental to successful health outcomes in the coming decades. Thanks to its diverse member ecosystem, ubiquitous presence in mobile and computing devices, strong presence in healthcare wireless infrastructure, small form factor, low-power consumption, strong security, and continued technological innovation, Bluetooth® is uniquely placed at the heart of future healthcare transformation and will play a vital role in increasing healthcare resilience in the years to come.

Bluetooth® technology has enabled the availability of a wide range of wearable devices, including smartwatches, fitness bands, and smart rings, that are capable of monitoring multiple fitness and wellness metrics. These include the ability to measure activities, heart rate, sleep quality, stress levels, bloody oxygen levels, and skin temperature, among other variables.

By 2030, nearly 250 million smartwatches enabled with Bluetooth® are expected to ship annually. Devices from Apple, Google, Huawei, Samsung, and Xiaomi, among many others, all offer the ability to track an increasing number of health metrics, enabling continuous monitoring and real-time synchronization with smartphones and health apps via Bluetooth®. This allows users to stay proactive about and optimize their fitness goals and activities, have better visibility into their overall health, make informed lifestyle and care decisions, discover potential health issues, and prevent any existing issues from worsening.

In addition to smartwatches, thanks to the low-power capabilities of Bluetooth® technology, these wearables can come in increasingly small form factors and with expanded battery life spans, enabling users to wear them continuously to receive more precise insights whether exercising, working, relaxing, or sleeping.

Meanwhile, in recent years, Bluetooth® has enabled a new category of smart ring devices from Oura, Samsung, and Ultrahuman, among others. Due to their very small form factors, these devices can enable much more discreet tracking of various activities and health metrics, while still supporting up to a week of battery life on average. ABI Research expects this to be one of the fastest growing segments for wearable devices, achieving a 27% Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) between 2025 and 2030, with annual shipments expected to reach over 70 million units by 2030.

Bluetooth® technology has also enabled an enormous range of Personal Healthcare Devices (PHDs) and RPM solutions that empower users to manage chronic conditions independently. These medical-grade solutions are also capable of sharing real-time health data with healthcare providers for better telehealth and remote care, ensuring that healthcare providers have access to up-to-date patient information to deliver timely, personalized care.

RPM solutions that have undergone rapid expansion in recent years are Bluetooth® Continuous Glucose Monitors (CGMs). These devices are capable of providing 24/7 monitoring of blood sugar levels to help users with diabetes manage their symptoms more effectively, provide better visibility into trends and patterns throughout the day and night, receive alerts when levels are too high or too low, and share this information with healthcare providers. Notable vendors include Dexcom, Abbott, Medtronic, i-SENS, SIBIONICS, and Roche, among others. According to ABI Research, tens of millions of Bluetooth® CGMs are already shipping annually, and with the recent availability of Over-the-Counter (OTC) solutions, this is likely to accelerate further in the coming years.

In addition to CGMs, Bluetooth® is also being leveraged for diabetes management through the form of smart insulin pens and automated insulin pumps. Smart insulin pens such as the Medtronic InPen™ connect via Bluetooth® to a mobile app to calculate the ideal insulin dose using glucose levels and carbohydrate estimates, as well as automatically logging doses and sending reminders. Meanwhile, several insulin delivery systems combine CGMs with smart insulin pumps to automatically adjust insulin delivery to prevent highs and lows and avoid the need to have multiple daily injections.

Personal, portable, and wearable Electrocardiogram (ECG) devices can monitor and detect potential cardiac issues such as atrial fibrillation, bradycardia, or tachycardia. These devices can send data to the user’s smartphone or a medical professional administering the reading, enabling faster and more accurate in-home readings from patients and visiting medical professionals alike. Notable examples include the AliveCor KardiaMobile and the Movesense Medical sensor, among many others.

Other personal RPM devices include pulse oximeters. These are typically battery powered portable fingertip worn solutions that can provide accurate readings of blood peripheral Oxygen Saturation (SpO2) and pulse rate. Meanwhile, innovative ear-worn pulse oximeters from OxiWear offer a more discreet solution that can provide continuous oxygen monitoring and low oxygen alerts, even while completing activities.

Other healthcare devices with Bluetooth® target respiratory issues. For example, handheld spirometers from Contec Medical Systems and Aluna, among others, can detect lung function changes for patients with various conditions, potentially enabling caregivers to intervene before hospitalizations are necessary. Meanwhile, chest-worn wearables have been developed that can directly measure respiration for those with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) and congestive heart failure.

In addition to these enormously varied solutions, there are also a whole host of other devices, appliances, and products connected via Bluetooth® that are used to provide better healthcare outcomes. This includes smart thermometers that sync with apps to track temperature measurements, connected toothbrushes that track brushing habits and motivate regular brushing, and smart weighing scales that automatically track weight and can share updates with an RPM platform. Meanwhile, smart medication dispensers can help reduce the estimated US$300 billion in healthcare costs associated with poor medication adherence.

The above Bluetooth® devices all take advantage of small form factors, low-power consumption, and an ability to connect to mobile devices and healthcare hubs to offload data to various RPM platforms and healthcare providers. Meanwhile, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) has published a set of specifications, known as the Generic Health Sensor (GHS) Profile, that standardizes the approach in which sensor data are collected from PHDs when used for RPM. With its arrival, comes much greater potential availability of PHDs that can be recommended by healthcare providers for RPM. Work on this standard was conducted within the Bluetooth SIG Medical Devices (MED) Working Group and these Bluetooth® enabled personal health monitoring and RPM devices are set to achieve a 28% CAGR between 2025 and 2030, highlighting the strong growth opportunity over the next few years.

Meanwhile, beyond the personal monitoring space, healthcare facilities of all types use Bluetooth® technology to enable real-time tracking of patients and critical medical equipment, minimizing delays and ensuring that resources are always when and where they are needed most to accelerate emergency response times. Bluetooth® patient trackers can also be used to help prevent wandering in eldercare settings, enhancing patient safety and giving caregivers peace of mind to know that vulnerable individuals can be quickly located in case of emergency.

In addition to patient safety, Bluetooth® is also vital in protecting the safety of healthcare staff. In the United Kingdom, the 2024 National Health Service (NHS) staff survey reported that over 14% of staff had experienced at least one incident of physical violence from patients, service users, relatives, or other members of the public over a 12-month period. To help address this threat, badges or wearables that can track the location of personnel can be equipped with panic buttons to enable staff to summon help and share their location with a single button press. Several Real-Time Location System (RTLS) vendors have developed and deployed Bluetooth® workplace violence prevention solutions within healthcare settings.

Bluetooth® technology is being leveraged in an increasingly diverse range of healthcare applications, directly addressing some of the major challenges facing service providers, while enabling new devices that can promote healthier lifestyles, improving quality of care, making healthcare more accessible, deepening the relationship between patients and caregivers outside of hospital settings, and improving staff and patient safety. Many characteristics of Bluetooth® technology make it the ideal technology for enabling healthcare products, including:

• Low-Power Consumption: Many healthcare products come in extremely small form factors with limited battery sizes. As a result, the ultra-low power benefits of Bluetooth® technology uniquely position it to enable hours, days, or months of operation. This enables users to use their products for longer, the creation of ultra-compact monitoring solutions, and swifter deployment and greater flexibility when installing smart building sensors.
• A Comprehensive Suite of Location Capabilities: Bluetooth® can support multiple positioning techniques, including Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI), Direction Finding, and Channel Sounding, offering a versatile portfolio of location-enabled devices that can be tailored to specific enterprise requirements. This can include more comprehensive RTLS installations, basic beacon functionality, or proximity-based interactions for equipment tracking, patient and worker safety, indoor wayfinding, hygiene compliance, and other valuable use cases.
• Inexpensive Solutions for Disposables: The availability of low-cost Bluetooth® chipsets can help enable a range of ultra-compact, disposable solutions that can help track a broader range of assets. Meanwhile, new ultra-thin sticker tags can enable tracking of everyday healthcare items and assets, while smart labels equipped with motion, humidity, and temperature sensors can also help with wider healthcare supply chain monitoring.
• Ubiquitous Presence in Mobile and Computing Devices: Many healthcare products require connectivity to PCs, smartphones, or tablets to enable a variety of functions, including data transfer, firmware updates, remote configuration, diagnostics, remote control, and activity tracking. Bluetooth® technology’s ubiquitous presence in these devices means it is uniquely positioned to enable these solutions.
• Strong Presence in Healthcare Wireless Infrastructure: Many enterprise and healthcare wireless access points and gateways already come equipped with Bluetooth® technology. This presence can enable swifter deployments of location services, sensor networks, and patient monitoring devices, reducing the burden of investing in new infrastructure.
• Continued Technology Innovation: Bluetooth® technology continues to evolve and add new features and capabilities, many of which will benefit the future development of healthcare products. The continued evolution of Bluetooth® Networked Lighting Control (NLC) solutions, Bluetooth® Mesh, positioning technologies, and the standardization of healthcare-related profiles are just a few examples of this.
• A Diverse Member Ecosystem: The competitive and ever-growing ecosystem of Bluetooth® Integrated Circuit (IC) vendors and other solution providers continue to drive improvements of other key metrics, such as power consumption, robustness, size, and range, providing enhanced flexibility and convenience for users of healthcare products. These are enabling a growing number of manufacturers to create new healthcare products and bring innovative experiences to users faced with a wide range of health challenges.

For more information on the role of Bluetooth® in the healthcare market, please see ABI Research’s recently published paper, Wireless wellbeing: How Bluetooth® technology is at the heart of healthcare transformation | Bluetooth® Technology Website