**6.4 Wearable sensing devices**

A wide range of wearable devices has been applied across different industrial sectors including health care, manufacturing, mining, and athletics [69]. Some of these devices have proven to be very useful and beneficial to these industries and efforts are being made by both researchers and industry practitioners to improve on these technologies and learn from their initial implementation [70]. With the attention being gained by wearable devices worldwide, mobile devices are becoming part of everyday life and the number, types, and forms of wearable devices are increasing exponentially in recent years [71]. The most widespread adoption and implementation of wearable devices have been in the healthcare industry for the continuous monitoring of a user's physiological status [72]. For instance, wearable devices are used in the healthcare sector by patients personally to continuously monitor their physiological parameters and manage their health and well-being on a personal basis, or grant physicians remote access to their health data and receive personalized medical care [73]. Similarly, wearable devices incorporated with sensors such as the GPS, heart rate monitors, and pedometers are widely used in sports and fitness for tracking performance through unobtrusive and noninvasive monitoring and measurements [69]. Wearable sensors are integrated into a multitude of equipment used by professional athletes to monitor and measure their performance and safety [74]. For instance, sensors are incorporated into the helmets of National Football League (NFL) players to detect concussions and wired smart compression shirts are used to measure arm movement, and techniques are deployed to determine a pitcher's effectiveness in Major League Baseball (MLB). These different categories of wearable sensing devices can be efficiently deployed for safety and health data collection and analysis to provide real-time information to workers in industrial environments for accident prediction and prevention.
