MWC15: Muse is a "fitness tracker for your brain"

The fitness industry is driving wearable adoption, as the success of devices such as Fitbit proves. In fact, on-stage at MWC we heard from Fitbit's Vice President, Gareth Jones, about how their range are breaking into a market which has been reserved to early-adopters through partnerships such as that with WeightWatchers.

So far, these trackers have focused on things like heart rate and perspiration. The most important part of a person's wellbeing, however, is their mental state. No-one wants to...

Wearable technology in the health sector: Challenges and predictions

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Over the past 18 months we have witnessed a sharp rise in the popularity of wearable technology, particularly in fitness and activity trackers. Medical Director of the NHS, Sir Bruce Keogh, recently told The Guardian how such wearables could eventually revolutionise the healthcare industry. With the public fitness habit intensifying and the technology growing more...

By Adam Croxen, 12 February 2015, 0 comments. Categories: Fitness, Health Monitoring, Health & Wellness.

Apps are just as good as wearables at tracking physical activity, study claims

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If you’ve got a smartphone and are looking to get fit, looking at the wearable devices on offer, then you might want to hold back on that purchase for now. A new research letter from the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) argues smartphones apps are just as effective as wearable devices in tracking step counts.

JAMA’s paper, entitled ‘Accuracy of Smartphone Applications and Wearable...

By James Bourne, 11 February 2015, 0 comments. Categories: Applications, Devices, Fitness, Health Monitoring, Health & Wellness.

Five things brands must do to prevent wearables becoming an unquantifiable nightmare

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Wearable tech and the quantified self clearly provides a huge opportunity for the hardware vendors and digital brands involved; giving them greater insight into the lives, behaviours and tastes of consumers than ever before. But as we learnt in Spiderman, "with great power comes great responsibility" - although a responsibility that I feel many organisations are not taking seriously enough.

Google is currently in the British high court accused of bypassing security settings...

By Gawain Morrison, 06 February 2015, 0 comments. Categories: Brands, Ecosystems, Health Monitoring, Health & Wellness.

AXA awards patient-led healthcare innovations

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Health insurance provider, AXA PPP, is hosting their first ever "Health Tech & You" awards at the Design Museum in London and will announce an overall winner during a ceremony on the 18th March 2015. Perhaps predictably, the shortlist is laden with wearable and connected devices which monitor health and performance to usher in a new-generation of patient-led...

By Ryan Daws, 28 January 2015, 0 comments. Categories: Fitness, Health Monitoring, Health & Wellness, Performance Monitoring, Trackers.

Wearable trackers can amplify your fitness

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Stop kidding yourself. Simply wearing a fitness tracker for a couple of months was never going to make you reach your health goals. In order for your new gadget to have any meaningful impact on your health, you need to know how to use it as effectively as possible.

1. Establish a Baseline

You might be raring to try out your new toy, but if you want to track your fitness level accurately you’ll need to establish a...

By Peter Lemon, 28 January 2015, 0 comments. Categories: Fitness, Health Monitoring, Health & Wellness, Performance Monitoring, Trackers.

Wearable devices could put you behind bars

The wearable sector is seeing its growth fuelled by fitness devices which are able to track our location, heart rate, and even specific movements. This of course has led to security and privacy concerns, but what if your device could end up putting you away for some time in the slammer?

It’s not much of a surprise that law enforcement want access to the data from our devices and cloud services as we live increasingly digital lives.

A personal injury lawyer in Canada has used data from a Fitbit smartwatch to...

By Ryan Daws, 08 December 2014, 0 comments. Categories: Data & Analytics, Health Monitoring, IoT, Privacy, Security, Smartwatches, Trackers.

New report asserts military, medical sectors as hottest for wearables uptake

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A study from Reportlinker on the wearable electronics and semiconductor market has agreed the current state of wearables for enterprise is far stronger than the consumer equivalent.

The report analyses the different industry sectors, market drivers, demographic factors and emerging markets, and notes the difficulty of sizing up a market which is so nascent and contains so many potential offshoots.

For the purposes of the report, Reportlinker classifies a wearable computing device...

By James Bourne, 28 November 2014, 0 comments. Categories: Devices, Health Monitoring, Health & Wellness, Research, Workplace.

A wearable tech app store? Garmin’s going for it with Connect IQ

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GPS provider Garmin has launched Connect IQ, a platform for developers to build apps which connect with Garmin’s wearable devices.

It’s an interesting move for the firm whose series of wearable devices, outside of fitness trackers, struggles compared to other vendors. As a result, the fact they’re looking for third party developers to beef up their offering is an understandable one.

“As an early mover in the wearables market, we are excited to open up the Garmin...

By James Bourne, 26 September 2014, 0 comments. Categories: Developers, Fitness, Health Monitoring, Health & Wellness.