There were two incidents that started us thinking about wearable technology.
In 2005, a woman employee of a Multi National Company was murdered by a cab driver attached to the company as he was driving her home. As I remember the story, the first thing she tried to do was reach for her mobile phone which was in her pocket book. The driver snatched the phone and threw it away.
Later that same year, one of our family friends, parked his car to buy some vegetables. His wife was in the car with him. As he got out and walked to the shop (that was behind his car), he suddenly had low sugar and collapsed. A crowd gathered around and fortunately took him to the hospital. All this time, his wife was unaware of the situation as she was in the car facing the other direction. She only realized about 40 minutes later that he had not returned and stepped out of the car and started looking for him. By then he was in the hospital. Here again the man had no way of reaching for the phone in his pocket.
In both these cases, it would have really helped if there was a wearable device with a button that could have been pressed in emergencies. A button that was small enough to wear and easy to press. Something that would notify their contacts with an SOS.
The quest began to design something that was small enough to wear.
It took a while for technology to catch up !!!!