Self HEALTH – Impressions from the 2011 CES Digital Health Pavilion

We’re just back from CES 2011 in Las Vegas. The primary purpose of our trip was to explore recent innovations in the world of connected healthcare. More specifically, we were interested to see how technology, particularly body-worn technology, was progressing in support of health and wellness.

Of course, body-worn devices that collect, mine, and display data in meaningful ways are central to many expert systems including the practice of modern medicine, the art of modern warfare and the world of elite sport. In each case, the data displayed requires various degrees of expertise to interpret and provide meaning to the end user (whether practitioner, user, or subject).

Until recently, each variation of sensing device was paired with proprietary software written for each specific application. Without an expert interpreter, these data displays were often no more useful than a seemingly random arrangement of tea leaves at the bottom of a tea cup.

This display showcases a tremendous data capture capability, but for the user, what does this all mean? How should someone respond to this seeming blizzard of data on display?

Over the years, we have worked closely with expert systems to improve usability, portability and cross-applicability of data sources and corresponding displays for years now. What we find particularly exciting these past few years is how the elite world of expert systems, particularly in body-worn devices, is influencing consumer grade devices more and more everyday. This is what we went to Vegas to devour.

One truly exciting innovation in the body-worn and personal device space is ANT+ radio technology which is now owned and promoted by GARMIN, the renowned maker of GPS tech. ANT provides a low-power transmitting technology and standard that can be used by a wide range of devices including those pictured in the graphic below:

ANT, along with better-known consumer technology Bluetooth, provides easy and inexpensive ways to move sensor data from sensors to hubs through a growing assortment of aggregating and display devices including smart watches and phones. At this year’s Digital Health Pavilion, where we spent nearly all of our time at CES, the growth of sensors and aggregators and displays was truly notable over year’s past. Here are some of the highlights.

From Withings, both a smart scale (which we are now testing) and a smart blood pressure cuff:

From ZEO - an amazing new device and supporting platform that analyzes ones sleep performance (which we are also testing):

From Digifit, a powerful new aggregating display that can integrate several sensor devices including both the Withings scale and the Zeo sleep system, along with an extensive array of fitness and wellness sensors:

We were also inspired and entertained by some sexy new offerings from sports innovators Adidas and Nike:

All in all, it was a great show with a rich assortment of participants from healthcare, the military, sport and increasingly, a broad range of health and wellness apps showing promise for everyone else. We were grateful to have been in attendance. Can’t wait ‘til next year.

Oh yes, and we can’t forget to mention an exciting new technology from Metalogics, a company not yet showing at CES but with whose CEO, John Dykstra, Scott walked the floor. John’s company has created the first body worn device that actually and precisely measures the calories our bodies burn 24/7. Check it out at: www.metalogicscorp.com

That said, we must again raise the question that’s on the tip of everyone’s tongue: