Smart wearables demonstrate a novel paradigm shift in health and health care by facilitating continuous and passive monitoring of many of the key parameters of physiological functioning (e.g., heart rate, blood pressure, oxygen saturation, glucose levels, sleep quality). Smart wearables harness the power of biomedical sensors, wireless communication, cloud services, and AI analytics to provide health visibility that maximizes the individual’s biometric data stream in real time for optimal health insights relative to the individual. This paper reviews the history, applications, benefits, and challenges of smart wearables for health monitoring, with a trajectory emphasizing the progression of wearable technology from exercise and fitness settings to nursing, medical diagnosis, disease management, and preventive health. The paper considers ethical and privacy issues and discusses the future of wearable health technologies toward a more individualized and less burdensome health care system.