According to the Financial Post, fitness and health wearables are expected to make up “72% of wearable computing devices shipments in 2014.” In the same article, it’s suggested that the numbers for medically-oriented wearables are expected to hit 100 million by 2016.

Granted, fads do come and go. But when looking at the big picture with healthcare wearables, however, there are at least 3 major reasons why this trend won’t go away.

1. Healthcare Wearables are Designed for a Stable Market

What industry is more recession-proof than the medical industry? As long as humans are around, healthcare services will be needed. Now factor in the fact that a 2012 report published by NAS Recruitment Communications cited the Bureau Labor of Statistics when it said that over 5 million jobs would be added to the field heading into 2020.

This isn’t just a stable market. It’s a growing one.

2. They Fit within a Larger Trend for Hospitals

Perhaps developed in response to increased demand, hospital care trends can be summed up as follows: less invasiveness, more outpatient care, and an emphasis on quicker recovery times.

The beauty of wearables is that they can be used to let patients monitor themselves and be more independent. They’re also a means of making professional communications more efficient back at the hospital. These are all outcomes that hospitals benefit from directly.

3. Healthcare Wearables Can Have a Narrow Focus

These days it seems like everyone wants their technology to do everything at once. According to Mashable, there’s a “global average of 25 downloads” of apps by smartphone users. In the quest to outfit a piece of technology with every possible perk the user could ever need, companies can easily find themselves blowing their budgets and struggling to keep pace with the better-funded and more well-known name.

In the healthcare industry, it’s okay for wearables to do one thing well rather than 100 things at once. When the goal is to keep track of a patient’s activity level, for instance, nobody needs the wearable to double as a universal remote, microwave starter, and garage opener.

Of course, this isn’t the first time that fads have taken over. How do small businesses, who may be struggling with funding, know that this is going to be a trend with staying power? Couldn’t it be another cynical marketing ploy so as to avoid being “the company that failed to back laptops way back when?”

In business, nothing is guaranteed. Even so, here are the facts: healthcare is a growing field, wearables fit into the philosophy many hospitals are pursuing, and they’re a product that lets companies concentrate on doing one thing well. All of this strongly suggests that there’s something to this healthcare wearables craze that startup after startup has been honing in on.

Now is the time to begin branding the company as a pioneer in the field of medical technology.

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