Hospital leaders everywhere struggle to get staff to wash their hands. Studies reveal that, without campaigns and reminders, hospital workers wash their hands about 30% of the time they’re working with patients. In Canada alone, this results in an estimated 220,000 healthcare-associated infections each year, and more than 8,000 deaths.

As a result, hospitals try everything from clever videos to security-like systems to monitor whether employees have washed their hands each time they’ve entered an intensive care room.

In Israel, a startup called Hyginex has come up with a better solution that is producing significant results. It’s a bracelet that looks just a bit bulkier than the fitness trackers that have grown so popular. When a doctor, nurse, or other worker gets near a patient, a sensor activates the nearest soap dispenser, alerting the worker. The first notice is a flash of light, followed by a vibration. When the worker washes his hands, the bracelet will notify him he he hasn’t washed long enough.

During a two-month trial in an Israeli ICU, compliance nearly doubled, from 25% to 44%. Workers wearing the wristband also washed their hands longer and used more soap, responding to the gamification component of the system.

The success of the Hyginex system is just one of a number of signs that wearables are finding a place. Google Glass may not become a mainstream consumer product, but between the utility of wearables in the workplace and rapid advances in the design of consumer products—notably wristwatches—wearables are becoming a legit category.

Despite this, Forrester has projected that by 2016, the category will decline. The rationale: Their functionality will be absorbed by other devices like smartphones and sensor-laden headphones. According to analyst James McQuivey, that could be one reason Apple acquired Beats, since sensor-laden headphones could erode the wearable marketplace. (I would think that a sensor-laden headphone is part of the wearables category, just as technology-enhanced glasses are.)

At Google IO a few weeks back, Google debuted its smartwatch platform, Android Wear, the reviews of which have mostly been positive despite early snark aimed at the very idea of a smartwatch. While Forrester’s analysis believes the functionality of a wearable will be rolled up into a smartphone, the benefit of a watch (as most of those reviewing the offerings have noted) is that you don’t have to dig your phone out of your pocket or purse in order to see a notification.

So bright are the prospects for wearables that Amazon has opened a wearable technology store in the UK, following up its US offering.

While some of the conditions Forrester factors into its projection are reasonable—software is more important than hardware, for one, and standalone devices don’t often thrive for long (remember the Flip camera?)—there ultimately will also be a fashion component to wearables, along with multi-function capabilities. A smartwatch will not only show you notifications and text messages, it will also monitor your heartbeat and check your blood sugar, all while it’s on your wrist, displaying the time when you’re not using it for something else.

But, as I have written before, it’s in the enterprise that wearable technology will establish itself. Consider that Salesforce.com has introduced Salesforce Wear, a wearable tech toolset for the enterprise. According to a blog post by CIO Al Sacco, the company is starting with a developer kit, but ultimately “Salesforce could potentially release its own packaged wearable app or set of apps in the future.”

In fact, according to Jeanne Meister, co-author of The 2020 Workplace, “Generation Z, or those of us born after 1997, will live in a world where using wearable devices is expected and even required in the workplace, just like social media access in the workplace is expected today.”

People are already starting to think about policies for wearables at work.

It’s not that Forrester’s rationale for projecting the fall of the wearables category are mistaken. It’s just that other factors outweigh them. By 2016, the wearable category will have evolved considerably from where it is today, but I expect it will be going strong.