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Wearables produce huge amounts of health data - and doctors are struggling to keep up

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Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNET

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ZDNET's key takeaways

Wearables generate a lot of data, but doctors can't always use it.

A system built for episodic care struggles with streaming data.

Some doctors are hopeful advances like AI could help.

Cardiologist Dr. David Kao is used to patients walking into appointments armed with data from their wearables.

One Wednesday morning in late May was no different: a patient showed him stats from her smart band that she was worried about.

"Probably 70% of it, I just don't know what to do with clinically, because it's all been made up by the company," said Kao, who is an associate professor of cardiology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. "And then there were like two things that were incredibly useful that we would not have had if she wasn't wearing her [device]."

Scenes like this one have been playing out across the country for more than a decade as patients and doctors struggle to handle the glut of metrics produced by wearable technology.

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