Health and fitness wearables: past, present, and future
Summary
Early pedometers were worn in a strap around a person’s waist and had a mechanical switch to detect motion (implemented using a lead ball that moved back and forth or a pendulum that hit a stop contact) in combination with a counter. In 1977 Finnish professor Seppo Säynäjäkangas, an avid skiing enthusiast, founded a company called Polar arising from his interested in using electronic technology to measure heart rate. This consisted of a chest patch radio transmitter, with an integrated electrocardiogram (ECG), and a separate wristwatch receiver that displayed real-time data about the wearer’s heart rate. However, many manufacturers are now producing medical-grade sensors that designed for use in devices intended for professional healthcare applications once they have attained the relevant certification from the appropriate regulatory body (like the Food and Drug Administration). Connecting medical grade devices worn by countless people to the Cloud and continuously uploading huge volumes of data will also open the possibility of applying machine learning techniques to uncover hidden trends and patterns in this trove of information.