Imagine a fitness tracker like a Fitbit, Up, or Misfit Shine on every person on the planet. Imagine all that data flowing up into an anonymized cloud-based platform. Imagine connecting that with health data from medical sensors. With location and altitude data from smartphones. With health information such as diseases we catch, conditions we develop, and accidents we encounter.
Imagine what you could learn about health and how to prevent disease.
Anyone who wears glasses knows the disaster of misplacing your specs. Not only do you spend hours frantically turning over every single thing in your house, but you do so blindly because, without your glasses, you can’t see a thing.
If tech-rich wearables are ever going to win widespread acceptance, the components that enable them to communicate with servers and access data will have to be tiny. When the equipment is embedded in a tablet or a smartphone, no one notices — but a bulky heart monitor sensor or GPS chip would be unsuitable for a T-shirt or wristwatch for athletes.
RunScribe is a small portable device that attaches to the back of your shoe via a cradle that works with all different kinds of sneakers. This device is worn during a run and, at the end, automatically uploads its data to your computer. Using its 9-axis kinematic sensor, the product measures 13 points of data including impact G-force, braking G-force, pronation velocity, pace, contact time and foot-strike type. It runs on battery and uses Bluetooth to connect to the iOS and Android app as well as the computer.
Theatro, the pioneer of voice controlled wearable communications devices for hourly workers in the retail, hospitality and manufacturing market segments, announced today that it has closed a $5 million investment from Khosla Ventures in a Series A ro
Heard of the quantified-self movement? It’s what most people associate with health wearables. And if you’re not part of it, you probably think it’s limited to fitness geeks, using wristband trackers from the likes of Jawbone, FitBit and Nike to monitor how many steps they take, their calorie intake, and a number of other data sets that will help them be the best them.
But when it comes to the potential of wearables and health, this is just the tip of the iceberg. A very small tip. It’s no longer about cool gadgets and fitness. It’s about potentially life-saving technology integrated seamlessly into our lives.
The charity shot, aka the free throw in basketball, can and has made the difference between a world championship and an ugly bridesmaid standing at the altar. Free throws win games. Free throws win championships.
There’s a little company in Sunnyvale, Calif., called Vibrado Technologies. It’s designed a sleeve that goes around your arm to help you shoot the the ball correctly and more accurately. The sleeve runs from the back of the hand all the way up to the upper bicep. It can be used to rehabilitate free throw motion, or any other shot for that matter. And, yes, there’s an app to store and analyze shot performance.
Over the last decade, we have seen a shift in the types of information that fuel business decisions making. There has been a transition from basing decisions and knowledge on limited qualitative and quantitative research to the development of a more comprehensive, real-time decision making process that utilizes today’s increased information flow. Company statements, online marketplaces, social media, intellectual property registries, and academic publications just a few examples of publicly available sources of information that hold potentially game-changing value to business leaders. But how do we see this shift playing out in how actual decisions are made?
You may love your wearable, but you shouldn’t take it to bed.
That’s the argument made by James Proud, the founder of Hello who recently created a runaway success on Kickstarter with the launch of the Sense sleep coach.
Proud knows something about decisions that one may lose sleep over. A few years back, the 22 year-old gave up a chance to be the first in his family to attend college in order to accept an opportunity offered to be mentored by venture capitalist Peter Thiel. But he has now attracted veterans from Apple and Fitbit to attack a better understanding of our everyday sleep with a product called Sense.
The consumer wearable tech ecosystem which is seeing companies doing everything from baby monitors to fitness trackers to hearing amplifiers saw an explosion of investor interest in 2013 – to the tune of $458M across 49 deals.
Although some suggest wearables are an overhyped fad, it’s clear more and more investors are taking an interest in the market. In 2013, 69 different venture capital firms or corporate investors participated in a wearables company financing. This is 8x greater than the number that did a deal in the space in 2010 and 4x the levels of 2011. [insert comment about lemmings here]
