Using Your Skin to Charge a Wearable Device? Wearable technologies, such as smartwatches, have grown in popularity in the last few years, largely because of the health monitoring features they offer to users. In fact, economists say the wearable technology market may nearly triple over the next few years, driven in part by a growing focus on personal health brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. According to researchers at the University of Massachusetts -- Amherst, however, wearable technologies have some limitations in their current configurations. Chief among those limitations is the need for wearable technology to be taken off a body and charged, which limits the data the technology can gather about a person’s health. Researchers are looking for ways to overcome this problem turning to a strange source: human skin.