Wearables and Big Data: A Match Made in Heaven
Big data is only getting bigger. This catch-all phrase for the continued growth and availability of information that was spurred from the escalation of PCs, smartphones, and tablets has only become more prevalent. Its next big step could very well lie in an emerging market.
That market is wearables, and more specifically, smart watches. Brent Hieggelke, CMO of mobile development at Urban Airship, sees Apple’s iWatch as the next big-data collector that encourages more immediate interaction between consumers and their favorite brands. Why? Because unlike a PC or phone, a smart watch sits snugly on your wrist.
"In quick glances, consumers can immediately see the latest promotions and with a simple button-tap indicate which product categories are of most interest and opt-in or out of special sales," Hieggelke explains.
ABI research estimates that the wearables market could reach $18 billion in the next five years, so it makes sense for major corporations to target this cash cow. And the level of detail that comes from the data tracks on the wearables is much greater than what we’ve dealt with before.
Your smart watch will show where people are going, how fast they traveled, what their heart rate was, and which ATMs they used along the way. Big data accounts for both structured and unstructured information, and while much of the data being mined from fitness bands or smart watches is raw, it can be refined and used for a medley of purposes.
Other than advertising, data collected from wearables is being used to progress medical research. IBM, in collaboration with the Michael J. Fox Foundation, is gathering and analyzing patient data by helping researchers take advantage of wearables and big data. Patients are wearing certain devices in order to collect data, and by the end of 2015, 10,000 patients will have opted in to the program.
This is all being done to improve treatment by making use of new, innovative resources. The real-time collection of data helps researchers detect patterns among the noise in order to understand how to fight the disease.
Wearables have always had this futuristic, “cool” mystique about them, but being useful is better than simply being cool. There will be plenty of smart watches and other assorted wearables out and about in the coming years, and thanks to their knack for information collection, big data will be just one of the many areas where we’ll see great strides.
