In April of 2017, we launched Verily Study Watch, an investigational device for capturing health information from clinical research participants while serving as an easy-to-read watch for daily wear. Since then, Study Watch has been used by thousands of participants in clinical research studies run by Verily and through our partners, such as the Project Baseline study, Aurora study, Personalized Parkinson’s Project study, and Parkinson’s Progression Markers Initiative. Unobtrusive biosensing through devices like Study Watch and other mobile health tools is an important new approach to understanding what happens in the body at any given moment in time, and can provide insights into how our bodies stay healthy or change and adapt with disease. With built-in biometric, environmental and movement sensors, Study Watch can contribute to research efforts broadly.
One area of focus for Study Watch has been cardiovascular health, as heart disease remains the number one killer of men and women in the United States1.
Google’s Wear OS may well have died a slow death by now, if not for Fossil Group. In 2016, it went all-in on the smartwatch platform, across not only the Fossil brand but also its accessory licensing deals with a whole host of designer names including Michael Kors, Emporio Armani, Skagen and Diesel.
That makes the news this week that Google is paying $40 million for new smartwatch technology, developed by Fossil Group, all the more intriguing. Not only has Fossil succeeded in making Wear OS fashionable, it’s now having an impact on future features, too.
… I was wondering if anyone, UK based ideally, could recommend any wireless earphones or truly wireless earbuds that they have but haven’t had a connectivity issue with. I will be wearing the watch on my left wrist almost all the time and I’ve read this is sometimes an issue.
… Fitness trackers such as Fitbit and Apple Watch already track step counts, heart rate and sleep rhythms. But they tend to be rigid and bulky, and mostly gather mechanical metrics, rather than assess a person’s underlying biology.
A new generation of devices instead aim to analyze sweat for many chemicals at once, producing a real-time snapshot of the wearer’s health or fitness. These devices also fit intimately against the skin, and are comfortable for anyone, from premature babies to the elderly. One version is already being advertised by Gatorade.
The latest advance in this technology, described Friday in the journal Science Advances, provides real-time information on the wearer’s pH, sweat rate, and levels of chloride, glucose and lactate — high levels of which could signal cystic fibrosis, diabetes or a lack of oxygen.
It starts as a persistent and irritating pain in the foot or lower leg, then it gets more intense, maybe with swelling, and soon a runner knows she’s being sidelined by one of the most common running injuries: a stress fracture. These tiny cracks in the bone can halt training for months or even end a sports season.
A segment of the multibillion-dollar wearables industry aims to save potential victims from this fate, but a Vanderbilt University engineering professor found a major problem: the devices are measuring the wrong thing.
Working with a local running club, an orthopedic specialist who advises the NFL Players Association and a team of Vanderbilt engineers, Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering Karl Zelik discovered that sensors only measuring the impact of the foot hitting pavement – which is what virtually all of them do – tell users little about the forces on bones that lead to stress fractures.
His research confirmed that the vast majority of force on the bone is actually from muscles contracting, not from the foot’s impact on the ground, a finding widely overlooked by both the wearables industry and many scientific studies.
While I know and fully accept that they are paid to use and promote their sponsor’s products, the riders are daily users of products so it’s a good way of seeing if something will stand the test of time.
The GPS cycling computer market used to be dominated by Garmin and I must admit to being a sheep and following all the pros that used them. I’ve always used Garmin and while my Edge 820 is still going, it will soon need replacing. As the number of alternatives in the pro peloton has really grown this year, here’s a run-down of who’s using what.
SafeSense Technologies LLC is the poster child for the broad-based support system now available in Michigan to promising high-tech startups spun off from research universities.
SafeSense has developed and patented technology for flexible printed sensors that can be embedded in football, hockey, lacrosse and wrestling helmets and in or on other athletic equipment and apparel to alert parents, coaches and doctors about the forces generated by contact. The sensors measure impact precisely and wirelessly transmit the data.
As the number of people suffering from foot pain rises and the health and wellness market grows in popularity, footwear retailers are being urged to focus more on a shoe’s hidden gem: the insole.
Sandwiched between the midsole and upper, the insole is all about substance over style — and as a result, it’s often relegated to the back corners of footwear stores. But whether sold as an insert or as an integrated part of shoes, insoles are doing more work than we give them credit for.
“The insole is the first thing that touches someone’s foot, yet the interior environment of the shoe is typically a hot, sweaty, smelly place. There wasn’t a lot of focus on performance,” said C.B. Tuite, chief sales officer at Ortholite. “It’s not just about stepping comfort; it’s about long-term comfort and performance.”
“It’s time to disrupt ski hardgoods,” said former Burton executive Clark Gundlach—and that might be exactly what he’s helping to do.
Ski boots have always faced the same predicament: They need to be really stiff to give users better control over their skis, but that can make them difficult to enter and uncomfortable to wear. Pain and function have, seemingly, always been at odds. But Gundlach and his team believe they have a better solution.
The end of custom bootfitting?
Born in Switzerland, the Dahu ski boot has had Europeans like Eduard van de Kraats of Top Secret Ski and Snowboard, a shop in Davos, Switzerland, excited for a while. “For me, it’s the future of the ski boot,” he said.
Engineers have discovered a way to use intense pulses of light to fuse tiny silver wires with polyester to make thin, durable heating patches. Their heating performance is nearly 70 percent higher than similar patches, according to a new study, which appears in Scientific Reports.
They are inexpensive, can get power via coin batteries, and are able to generate heat where the human body needs it since they can be sewn onto clothing.
Invista’s Cordura brand has been recognised by ISPO Textrends 2019 for the fifth year running for outstanding innovation, with fabrics awarded by a jury of international industry experts based on the opportunities they present for designers and product managers.
Comprised of a wide portfolio of forward-looking technologies, this year’s winners aligned with three of the key textile trends identified by the ISPO Textrends team as shaping the global market for Fall/Winter 2020-2021.
W.L. Gore & Associates, makers of GORE-TEX products, recently won a Gear of the Year Award from Gear Junkie, a heavily trafficked consumer media site that tests and reports on leading gear and technology in the outdoor industry. Gore won for one of its newest fabrics innovations, GORE-TEX Fabric with Stretch Technology, which offers industry-leading stretch in a waterproof garment – something Gear Junkie called “unlike anything else on the market.”
“[Gore] crimped the fabric in a honeycomb shape so it can flatten out and then return to its 3-D shape. This creates stretch without relying on the mechanical stretch of the fabric itself … It gives the wearer unmatched mobility,” Gear Junkie editors wrote.
The North Face, an American outdoor product company specializing in outerwear, tents, sleeping bags, and more, unveiled FUTURELIGHT™, a new breathable waterproof material set to revolutionize the future of technical fabrics. The material, which the company describes as the most advanced breathable-waterproof outerwear material, was developed using Nanospinning technology.
Racial diversity concerns aren’t foreign to the footwear industry. Specifically, athletic heavyweights, including Nike, Under Armour and Adidas, have come under fire as of late for their lack of inclusion at the top levels of the companies.
But the athletic industry isn’t alone. Experts point to a long-standing racial divide in the outdoor industry, as well.
“You walk around ISPO, you walk around Outdoor Retailer, and it’s not representative of everyone,” said Keen’s senior director of global marketing, Ashley Williams. “It wouldn’t even be representative of the U.S. Census.”
In 1929, in Montana’s Glacier National Park, a park ranger caught a poacher. The Ranger escorted the poacher out of the area, only to, in his own words, “…slam his head against a tree. I knocked him out cold and he dropped like a log.” It was not an isolated case.
Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association; Grace Shin et al. from
Objectives
Activity trackers hold the promise to support people in managing their health through quantified measurements about their daily physical activities. Monitoring personal health with quantified activity tracker-generated data provides patients with an opportunity to self-manage their health. Many have been conducted within short-time frames; makes it difficult to discover the impact of the activity tracker’s novelty effect or the reasons for the device’s long-term use. This study explores the impact of novelty effect on activity tracker adoption and the motivation for sustained use beyond the novelty period. Materials and methods
This study uses a mixed-methods approach that combines both quantitative activity tracker log analysis and qualitative one-on-one interviews to develop a deeper behavioral understanding of 23 Fitbit device users who used their trackers for at least 2 months (range of use = 69–1073 days). Results
Log data from users’ Fitbit devices revealed 2 stages: the novelty period and the long-term use period. The novelty period for Fitbit users in this study was approximately 3 months, during which they might have discontinued using their devices. Discussion
The qualitative interview data identified various factors that users to continuously use the Fitbit devices in different stages. The discussion of these results provides design implications to guide future development of activity tracking technology. Conclusion
This study reveals important dynamics emerging over long-term activity tracker use, contributes new knowledge to consumer health informatics and human-computer interaction, and offers design implications to guide future development of similar health-monitoring technologies that better account for long-term use in support of patient care and health self-management. [full text]
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences; Dominic James Farris, Luke A. Kelly, Andrew G. Cresswell, and Glen A. Lichtwark from
Human feet have evolved uniquely among primates, losing an opposable first digit in favor of a pronounced arch to enhance our ability to walk and run with an upright posture. Recent work suggests that muscles within our feet are key to how the foot functions during bipedal walking and running. Here we show direct evidence for the significance of these foot muscles in supporting the mechanical performance of the human foot. Contrary to expectations, the intrinsic foot muscles contribute minimally to supporting the arch of the foot during walking and running. However, these muscles do influence our ability to produce forward propulsion from one stride into the next, highlighting their role in bipedal locomotion. [full text]