Wearable tech is the buzz word in 2013. And Intel is right behind, adding to that buzz as it shows off smaller and smaller technologies able to realise new potential.

As the company's president Renee James took to the stage at the opening keynote at the Intel Developer's Conference (IDF) in San Francisco, her words were clear: wearable tech will "transform every area of our lives".

It all comes down to size. Showing off a silicon-on-skin concept that resides on the body - designed to relay health information to the relevant professionals - James detailed that chips would be shrinking down to a mere 10-nanometres by 2015, and as small as 7nm by 2017. Put that in context: that's somewhere between 15-20 atoms wide. You can't use a ruler for that one.

Wearable tech in the here and now is as much a fashion statement as it is an investment in technology. In the future it looks as though we'll have devices entirely different to that; almost like the way a pet is microchipped the forthcoming tech will be able to monitor every aspect of our lives.

James went on to suggest that such on-body devices would be able to sequence a person's genome within a matter of weeks. That's a complex amount of data to generate. But this isn't science fiction - it's science fact and it's coming, and soon.