Over the past few years, we’ve seen Samsung slowly entering the digital health space with ultrasound devices, medical grade TV monitors, and more recently, its line of Gear and Gear Fit trackers. This past week at the Health 2.0 WinterTech conference in San Francisco, Samsung showed off a little more about their plans for using their technology to improve our health. We were able to capture some photos of the stage screen with a phone camera to give you an idea of what we saw.
On stage, Dr. Tejash Shah, Samsung’s Director of Strategy & Business Development, showed off the Simband, a wearable that is based on Samsung’s Gear watch design and contains various sensors to measure a user’s biometric data.
Sounds like just another wearable fitness band, right?
However, the Simband isn’t meant for consumers. In fact, it won’t be commercialized at all. Simband is meant to be a platform that will allow wearables companies to improve on their devices and data processing algorithms. Developers can use the Simband’s sensors to ensure that they are accurately collecting data, and then in turn use that data to make better apps and devices, somewhat like a “wearables development kit”. The benefit of this is that wearables companies can be confident that they are developing on Samsung’s comprehensive, more universal platform, and they are collecting data using Samsung’s highly accurate and robust sensors.
Some of the sensors available on the Simband include an accelerometer, gyroscope, ECG, galvanic skin response sensor, multiple optical sensors to measure pulse/heart rate, and a skin surface thermometer. All the data can be transferred wirelessly via Bluetooth 4.0.
While most of us will never see Simband, it’ll start shipping next month for our readers who hope to develop the next great wearable.
More information: Samsung Digital Health
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