Category: Wearables

Categories
Eyes Wearables

Wearable + navigation service for the visually impaired

Aira.IO combines wearable tech with a remote agent service to guide the visually impaired.  Users are connected with agents who interpret the data stream from smart glasses and assist with navigation. The device uses a routing algorithm based on user and agent preferences.

The company completed  a multi-phase beta trial with 100 blind and low-vision participants in simulated and real-life settings. Users wore Google Glass and were assisted by agents via Aira’s dashboard platform during several activities: navigating city streets and intersections; being in a hotel; locating and identifying canned goods in a kitchen; selecting clothing in a simulated department store; shopping at a supermarket; ordering at a coffee shop; and traveling by foot and public transportation.

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Categories
Autism Wearables

GPS, voice monitoring wearable for special needs kids

AngelSense is a tracking and voice monitoring wearable designed for children with special needs.  Parents can:

  • Receive an automatically generated real-time schedule
  • Listen to a child’s activities
  • Receive notifications of every location change
  • Locate a lost child with a 10 second live location update
  • Automatically download photos of the day’s locations

Continuous monitoring and real time alerts are enabled by cloud-based analytics and a web app.  Subscribers receive a visual diary of the child’s day, and an interface where parents and caregivers can share information and photos.

The company’s website highlights a case study where a parent and child review photos of the child’s day:  “Every evening Josh and I watch the places he visited. By using the pictures, Josh can finally share his day with me! He understands I keep him safe and feels more confident knowing I’m with him at all times.”

AngelSense customer service is staffed  with parents of special needs kids who are  expert users of product.

While AngelSense is geared toward children, ApplySci believes that it could be also be  used as a safety solution for dementia sufferers and their caregivers.

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Categories
Autism Brain Wearables

Glass app helps autistic kids understand expressions, emotions

Dennis Wall, Catalin Voss, and  Nick Haber of Stanford’s Wall Lab are developing Google Glass software to help autistic children recognize and understand facial expressions and emotions.

Head motion tracking sensors, a microphone, and an eye tracking infrared camera analyze a wearer’s behavior during social interactions. Real time social cues are provided, and responses, including eye contact details, which can be analyzed in behavioral therapy, are recorded. The goal is to incorporate behavioral therapy into natural settings.

Last year ApplySci described a related technology,  Brain Power‘s Glass app, where expressions are interpreted and social engagement with parents is monitored, using games and exercises.

The Autism Glass Project has been tested on 40 children, and a clinical trial of 100 participants is now beginning.

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Categories
Epilepsy Wearables

App detects seizure onset with heart rate, accelerometer data

Johns Hopkins professor Gregory Krauss has used ResearchKit to develop an app to detect the onset and duration of epileptic seizures with an Apple Watch.  Wearers must touch the watch to capture accelerometer and heart rate sensor data, and notify a caregiver.  The EpiWatch app logs seizures and responses, and tracks medication adherence and side effects.

The EpiWatch is similar in function to Embrace by Empatica, developed by MIT professor Rosalind Picard.  Embrace uses skin conductance, accelerator, and gyrometer  data to detect seizures.  (See ApplySci, November 28, 2014.)

ApplySci applauds these advances, which by recording patterns and notifying loved ones,  have the potential to improve the lives of epilepsy sufferers.  There is little evidence that cardiac activity alone can be used to predict seizures (see Amir Geva‘s paper in IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering).  The next step is to develop the ability to predict seizures in advance, which will require brain activity interpretation.

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Categories
IoT Wearables

Swallowed sensors interact with smart devices

At a recent conference, Jawbone CEO Hosain Rahman said that his company is researching swallowable and implantable fitness sensors.  They would remain in a user’s bloodstream and be capable of monitoring multiple factors. The sensors could interact with smart devices, including adjusting thermostats if one’s body is too warm or cold, or not turning a car on if one’s blood/alcohol level is too high. While ApplySci believes that invasive, implanted sensors are not necessary for fitness/lifestyle applications, we applaud Jawbone’s work toward innovative, noninvasive devices

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Categories
Orthopedics Smart Fabric Wearables

Smart shirt monitors posture, sends correcting alerts

TruPosture is a smart shirt with embedded nanosensors that continuously measure the curvature of one’s spine.  It is being crowdfunded on indiegogo.

The wearer, and a physical therapist, set a personalized posture goal.  When the spine diverges, vibrations  are sent as posture reminders. One vibration burst happens when a wearer is leaning too far forward, and two bursts happen when he/she leans too far back.

Posture performance is tracked over time through an app.  The data can be shared with doctors or therapists, or integrated with fitness wearables.

Categories
Diabetes Sensors Wearables

External power supply for Google contact lens

Power efficiency in wearables is key to continuous, accurate monitoring, for both medical and fitness applications.

Google has filed a patent application suggesting  that an external device will power the sensor of its contact lens, and it could be handheld or embedded into a companion wearable.

The application states that “an external reader device or ‘reader’ can radiate radio frequency radiation to power the sensor. The reader may thereby control the operation of the sensing platform by controlling the supply of power to the sensing platform. In some examples, the reader can operate to intermittently interrogate the sensing platform to provide a reading by radiating sufficient radiation to power the sensing platform to obtain a measurement and communicate the result. The reader can also store the sensor results communicated by the sensing platform. In this way, the reader can acquire a series of analyte concentration measurements over time without continuously powering the sensing platform. The reader could also be built into eyeglasses, jewelry headband, head cover , earpiece, [or] other clothing so that it could continually power the lens.”

Le Temps reports that Novartis and Google plan to start testing their smart contact lens for people with presbyopia in 2016.

Categories
Monitoring Sensors Wearables

Mouthguard monitors health markers via saliva

A prototype mouthguard that monitors health markers via saliva is being developed at UCSD.

The large device must be streamlined and miniaturized for mass adoption, but the concept of noninvasive monitoring of lactate, cortisol, and uric acid, is excellent.  Previously, this was only possible through a blood test.  The device can be worn by athletes, patients, or the military.

The sensing platform is screen printed using silver, Prussian blue ink and uricase, an enzyme that reacts with uric acid.  It was nano-engineered to provide the chemical equivalent of a two-step authentication system, ensuring a uric acid-only reaction.  The system includes a potentiostat, microcontroller, and Bluetooth Low Energy transceiver.

Categories
Wearables

Secure, wireless, magnetic field system for full body monitoring

UCSD’s Patrick Mercier is developing an ultra low power, wireless, magnetic field system to transmit information through the human body. His goal is a more secure wireless sensor network for full-body monitoring.

Current bluetooth technology uses high-frequency electromagnetic radiation to transmit data.  The signals do not easily pass through the human body, and require additional power to overcome obstruction.

According to Mercier, “This technique achieves the lowest path losses out of any demonstrated wireless human body communication system. It will allow us to build much lower power wearable devices.”

Categories
fitness Smart Fabric Wearables

Ralph Lauren’s health sensing smart shirt

PoloTech, Ralph Lauren and OMsignal‘s smart shirts, will be available for sale this week.  Like the partnership between Intel and Opening Ceremony, this represents the fashion mainstreaming of wearable technology.

The shirt has embedded silver fibers to track heart rate, heart variability, breathing depth and recovery, intensity of movement, energy output, stress levels, steps taken, and calories burned. One must also wear a “black box” device to receive the sensor data and to capture activity information.

The data is then transmitted to an iOS app, which offers cardio, agility and strength workouts, live fitness monitoring, and exertion and effort ratings.  The sensor data adapts the app’s workouts to the wearer’s performance in real time.

Categories
Sensors Wearables

Sensor pill for 3D colon imaging

Check Cap, developed by Yoav Kimchy,  is a colon imaging sensor pill.  A patient takes small amounts of a contrast agent with meals.  The pill is swallowed, and after reaching the colon, a signal is emitted in every direction, providing 3D imaging. The data is sent to a wireless patch worn by the patient, and his/her doctor receives a rendering of the colon in 10 minutes.

The technology is based on a gallium nitride microchip that can withstand the high voltage needed by the sensors.  As it is miniaturized, its developers believe that it be used to scan narrower body parts, such as  blood vessels.

Check Cap said that a patient’s radiation exposure is equivalent to a chest-X-ray, or 1/300 of a CTC analysis.

Categories
Heart IoT Respiratory Wearables

Phone sensors measure oxygen saturation with out pulse oximeter

MoveSense allows oxygen saturation to be monitored  by phone sensors with what its developers describe as medical accuracy.  A mobile phone must be carried in one’s pocket, and no pulse oximeter is required.  The technology was developed by Bruce Schatz at the University of Illinois.

In a study, patients wore pulse oximeters (for comparison) and carried phones with MoveSense, which continuously recorded saturation and motion. Continuous saturation defined categories corresponding to status levels, including transitions. Continuous motion was used to calculate eight gait parameters from the data. Their existing gait model was then trained with these data points and used to predict transitions in oxygen saturation.

The researchers  discovered that analysis of the saturation, combined with the gait data, could predict saturation with 100 percent accuracy. The model accounts for patients walking faster and slower, which impacts their hearts and lungs.