May 29, 2014, By Matthew Holt http://thehealthcareblog.com/blog/2014/05/29/samsung-throws-kitchen-sink-onto-the-wrist/
Samsung Throws Kitchen Sink onto the Wrist Yesterday phone and electronics giant Samsung rushed out its next step in health related hardware. Samsung was clearly trying to get this out the door and in the press before Apple’s forthcoming announcement of something health-related –or I assume that’s what their industrial espionage told them Apple was about to reveal (just kidding guys!). And some people (well, Techcrunch) were clearly unimpressed.
the health related smartwatch work? I’ve three quick assessments/questions. 1) They are loading up the wrist. Others struggle with pulse. CNET’s Sharon Profis just tried out some wrist band pulse monitors and Basis, Withings Pulse & Samsumg Gear Fit all basically flunked out when the going got tough.
from devices and other non-device data, there may be a huge play here. Again very early days, but I’ve been saying someone has to put all this data together and allow others to build the dashboards and control systems for professionals, consumers and most importantly consumer advocates. Qualcomm Life (FD-I’m on their advisory board) is heading in this direction and Samsung now has stated its intention here too.
The results were clear: The most compelling moment 3) Finally, Samsung’s desire to which I captured (poorly) in the most of the trackers employing optical sensors make the one data utility layer video above was the demo of the rule them all means that they were only accurate (or close to accurate) at my to new SIMBAND–albeit a concept are lining up partners from the normal resting heart rate of about 70-80 BPM. get-go. I met Health 2.0 stalrather than an available product. (In fact a couple of their partners warts TicTrac and Dacadoo (both The Garmin VivoFit, a device that employs a told me that no-one outside the originally European) who were chest strap, was expectedly dead-on at company has one). In the SIMpartnering with Samsung–in fact accelerated rates after exerciseH BAND are a stack of new sensors TicTrac built a new dashboard which attempt to use the wrist to that was featured in the session. monitor not only heart rate, but blood presAnd I saw MyFitnessPal‘s CEO outside, sure, temperature, EKG and do it all contiHoweverm in addition heart rate SIMBAND although he told me they were just looking at nuously. You can see a rather better video of is adding EKG, blood pressure, temperature this stage. And there were many others I prothe demo from Gizmodo, which I cued up to & more. The obvious question is, will it bably didn’t see in the scrum at the meeting. start at the right place. work? Samsung is lining up the pieces and has a They also announced a fully open platform 2) Samsung is stressing “open” everything– sensible strategy. I think this is a big deal for (what at Health 2.0 we dub the Data Utility and I confirmed this with a couple of partthe future of what is essentially continual Layer) called Samsung Architecture Multiners who are getting access to software and quasi-medical grade monitoring. But it’s modal Interactions (SAMI) to accept and spit hardware specs. This is in contrast to another complicated, given that no one has cracked out all types of health related data. smart phone company you may have heard the wrist, so to speak. And no one has really about…. created that continuous data platform. This is all potentially very impressive. Samsung’s first two attempts at Smart Watches The data utility layer play may be the most Will it work? We’ll see. If it does work then have fizzled, but they tend to keep coming interesting of them all. There is a lot of com- I think the health care world as well as the back, and now are pretty much the best at plexity here, but if you can imagine Samsung fitness world will need to pay attention. Smart Phones. (You fan bois can keep your supporting an ecosystem of different data teeny iPhone screens!) But can they make types, including perhaps other medical data