5 ways wearable tech is getting even smarter

5 ways wearable tech is getting even smarter
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A slideshare by People’s Monthly on mobile and wearables prompted us to look at the popular and potential wearables of today and how they might be used in different market places.

At Purple wearable tech matters to us because it’s reliant on connectivity to make it work. As the number of wearables increases around the world, the need for consistent, fast and reliable public WiFi will become even greater.

Innovations in healthcare through wearables

Even smarter wristbands

Many people have wristbands to track fitness, but wristbands for healthcare are getting even smarter. Empatica have developed the Embrace wristband, which can be used to detect seizures in epileptic patients.

As well as tracking fitness and sleep, this wearable can also measure the relationship between biological signals and emotions, accurately predicting the onset of epileptic attacks based on stress levels. The band, upon such detection of a possible attack, would send a minor vibration to the user. The user can turn this off if it is a false alarm, however, should there be no response, the band would alert friends, family or even a doctor through the mobile app.

Smart Band aids

The idea of this wearable has stemmed from the fact that so many caregivers who go overseas to help those stricken with infectious diseases put their own lives at risk too. Now there is a piece of wearable tech that may help to fight deadly diseases and it is being hailed as the ‘Smart Band Aid.’  

When helping to deal with the outbreak of Ebola it has been a major challenge to use medical equipment such as stethoscopes safely because of how a healthcare worker needs to gain such close proximity to the patient. The Smart Band Aid is a sensor rich rubber band which can be attached to a patient’s sternum and can take heart rate, temperature and oxygen levels. This allows the caregiver to monitor a patient from a distance.

Even diapers are getting smart

Healthcare practitioners often ask a patient for a sample of urine from adults as it is a pretty easy way to measure and check for a number of things from pregnancy to diabetes. However, it can be near impossible to get young children to do this successfully. With the Smart Diaper such a measurement is going to be a whole lot easier to assess!

There is a panel on the outside of the diaper which, when it gets wet, will show a reaction to leukocytes or nitrates, for example, and change colour accordingly. When the mobile app is scanned with the correct QR code for a specific colour, it will collect readings over time and check for patterns that could be a cause for concern. Could we soon see these Smart Diapers in every paediatrician’s office as a way to detect illnesses such as kidney infections, type 1 diabetes and vitamin deficiencies in younger children?

Improving travel

The Sesame Ring has been developed by the Singapore University of Technology to help people to travel smarter. The Sesame Ring worn is available in several bright colours and acts as a replacement for the travel cards (CharlieCards) used in to access the trains and buses in Boston.

The rings are embedded with a similar tap and go tech that is used in the original CharlieCards and have an RFID chip within each ring. It is possible that this technology could be embedded into other wearables and even into smartphone covers. The ultimate goal of course is to change the way we travel and to replace smart cards entirely across the globe.

Entertainment with technology

The insider bands

Insider bands were first seen in the Outside Lands music festival in San Francisco. Insurance companies Esurance and ClearHart collaborated to install several 14 foot towers with NFC enabled Nexus 7 tablets mounted on each of them.

With simple registration online prior to the festival for those tech savvy millennials, they could connect to their Facebook profiles. Upon collecting the insider band on the day of the festival, they simply needed to ‘tap’ the activate bands onto a tower to check in to Facebook, find and message friends, receive exclusive offers – all without having to rely on network reception.

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