This is an edited book on a timely topic, with a title that is sure to attract readers, but with a collection of chapter articles that are of uneven quality. The four sections in the book encompass skin-contact wearables, non-contact-based wearables (which surprisingly still includes contact devices for monitoring sleep and health state), beyond wearables and signal processing.
While the earlier chapters report on existing technologies that are relatively well established, the future-looking third section includes a chapter on a very early-stage reminder technology for people with dementia and a chapter with a meta-analysis of fall-detection wearables using IoT, which lacks a clear outcome. The signal processing section includes a chapter on home automation that is a review of existing systems, essentially, brief product descriptions. An authors-developed system is mentioned but with few details.
The electronic version of the book has hyperlinked references to sources and internal elements but lacks an index. Among the charts and figures, several in color, one (on systems thinking) has blurry text that makes it barely legible. Chapters include as many as 200 references or as few as five, with the latest references from 2020 (only one as recent as 2021).
Given the wide range of topics covered, the uneven rigor and depth and the lack of application problems, the book would be most useful for professionals in those areas where the coverage is strong (sleep monitoring, health monitoring, brain-computer interfaces) but not as a textbook.
Review by Bogdan Hoanca, University of Alaska Anchorage, USA.
The opinions expressed in the book review section are those of the reviewer and do not necessarily reflect those of OPN or its publisher, Optica (formerly OSA).