According to the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation, "constant change is the new normal" for healthcare technology professions. Every year there are many impressive advances with medical equipment which allow medical professionals to manage diseases and improve the quality of lives for their patients.

Below we explain some of the most amazing hospital equipment technological advances of this year and what you can expect to see in your local clinics in future.

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Fitness bands and smartwatches that monitor your activity are notoriously inaccurate. Wear a bunch of them at the same time and they’ll all return entirely different results. And we’re not talking about slight discrepancies either -- the results can differ by several thousand steps. The idea is the trackers provide you with a general ballpark figure, rather than a precise one, so you can see how your activity varies on a daily basis, and take steps -- hah! -- to improve on it.

As a result, comparing the results from two or more fitness trackers isn’t usually very helpful -- each device will measure activity in its own way, and who is to say what’s right or wrong? However, more advanced wearables -- Microsoft Band and Apple Watch, for example -- measure your heart rate, and it’s much easier to check how accurate they are. All you need to do is compare the results they produce with the figures from a reliable source.

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While you certainly don’t need technology to get the blood pumping, there are a huge number of fitness apps out there that can help encourage and focus your exercise regime.

If you do need some help getting your running shoes on, then we’ve listed five of the best apps for motivation, technique and fitness monitoring currently available.

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I’m a huge fan of Zombies, Run! and whenever I hit the treadmill (or, less frequently, the streets) the exercise app is always with me, turning a boring run into an action-packed journey through the zombie apocalypse.

I’ve been eagerly awaiting Season 4 of Zombies, Run! for ages now, and today is the day it arrives, bringing with it not only 40 new missions, but also some big improvements, including an important pricing change -- it’s now free to play.

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Can you trust the Apple Watch heart rate sensor? Well, it’s pretty darn accurate it seems, going by some testing performed by a Wisconsin-based engineer who's into Mac and iPhone development.

That would be Brad Larson, who tested the Apple Watch on a run alongside the Mio Alpha. Slashgear spotted Larson’s experiment and the resulting graph on Twitter (see above), with the engineer tweeting: "Extracted the raw Apple Watch HealthKit heartrate samples after a run and compared it to an HR monitor I had on".

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The Microsoft Band has been available over in the US for quite some time now, and fitness band fanatics have had to wait patiently for the device to become available over here -- but the good news is, you can now buy one in the UK.

Yes, if you scoot on over to the official Microsoft web store, there’s a big "buy now" button you can click to get your fitness wristband. And how much will it set you back? £170 including VAT.

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The digital health imperative is upon us. With advancements in technology, the opportunities are bound only by our imagination. Recent investments in digital health are telling signs of the disruptive forces at play and the future that is just waiting to happen.

With the advent of arrays of sensors that track a myriad of bio-markers ranging from activity, nutrition, heart rate, cholesterol level, glucose levels, sleep to those that can even detect a stroke, consumer technologies have ushered in a new era of health management.

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Fitbit has announced new cycling features will be added in the next major update, alongside multi-device support. It is the first major update for the Fitbit Surge, the watch-styled fitness band launched earlier this year.

The new cycling support offers better metrics when on a bicycle, allowing the user to track distance, duration, calories burned, average speed, heart-rate (using the heart-rate monitor) and other stats -- all synced up to a companion smartphone.

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Blue wavelength light emitted by the screens of computers and gadgets is known to suppress the body’s production of melatonin, the hormone which regulates sleep.

Use of gadgets therefore can prevent you from getting a good night's sleep. Mobile accessory company Fabre Technik has come up with some tips to help you make use of your gadgets but still get some decent shut-eye.

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The Apple Watch "official" launch event (as opposed to last autumn’s mere unveiling) is almost upon us -- in fact it’s a week from today -- and CEO Tim Cook has been busy stoking the hype fires one last time.

Cook talked to the Telegraph about the sort of innovations Apple is planning to bring forth with its smartwatch, one of which is that the device will be usable as your car keys -- replacing the chunky fobs that vehicles use these days.

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Microsoft Band, the wearable fitness tracker, and its accompanying Health app have received their first major update, some four months after the initial release.

With the latest update, the band is getting some new features -- enabling it to monitor biking (yes, even stationary biking), a quick read feature for notifications and -- (you’re not going to believe this) -- an on-screen keyboard.

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Fitness trackers have become all the range and over 3 million were sold in the second half of 2014, making up over three quarters of the total wearable sales, but it looks like the benefits of a fitness tracker might be minimal.

That is according to a new study by the University of Pennsylvania, which measured the amount of steps on a treadmill with two smartphones and three wearables.

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Even though nearly 90 percent of companies offer wellness incentives, more than two-thirds of American adults are overweight or obese. Studies abound on the adverse health effects of excessive sitting; most recently, researchers from Toronto found that sitting more than eight hours per day can increase the risk of developing type 2 diabetes by ninety-one percent, dying of cardiovascular disease by eighteen percent and dying of cancer by seventeen percent.

The silver lining to those bleak statistics is that many of the negative effects of prolonged sitting can be reduced simply by finding ways to move throughout the workday -- for example, a brisk walk around the block during lunch or a few chair squats at your desk. Given sitting’s bad rap -- not to mention longer workdays -- it’s no surprise that companies are striving for more effective ways to incentivize and reward healthy employees to reduce absenteeism and insurance costs.

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If you or a family member suffers a stroke, it can be a life-changing event. While some people do not have lasting effects, many face paralysis and weakness in different parts of their body. In other words, someone who is very active and mobile, can be relegated to a more sedentary lifestyle. This change can have psychological impacts too.

Luckily, there are therapies for victims of stroke, that can return the patient's strength and mobility. While this therapy is normally a boring affair, the Ohio State University has devised a new technique that is beneficial to recovery, while also being fun too. You see, it uses Microsoft's Kinect device.

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Manchester City has claimed the title of the world’s first football club to create an app for Android Wear smart watches.

The app is called CityMatchday Wear, and it can be downloaded for free from the Google Play store. It offers club related news, goal alerts and notifications for different events, such as yellow and red cards, penalties, team sheets, match details and substitutions.

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