Hexoskin, one of the early players in the quest to bring smart clothing to the masses, is launching its Astroskin smart garment that can track a user's vitals including heart rate and blood pressure.
The garment, which is made up of an upper body shirt and headband, has previously been used in a bunch of studies and evaluations to measure vitals like sleep activity. Built in partnership with the Canadian Space Agency, the Astroskin is based on the Bio-Monitor that Hexoskin built to monitor astroanuts' health in space.
Essential reading: The biggest benefits of smart clothing
The setup is able to continuously monitor blood oxygen levels, blood pressure, activity levels, ECG, HRV, breathing rate and skin temperature. That data is tracked in real-time for 48 hours. There's also an iOS app and the company's custom software to review the data.
Now it's taking that astronaut-friendly tech and is making it available to be used for health research and by organisations in the pharmaceutical and military and defense space.
Hexoskin has been working on smart clothing since 2006 and successfully crowdfunded its sports clothing range back in 2013 that's capable of monitoring breathing rate, heart rate, track activity and sleep. The Hexoskin Smart, which is currently available for anyone to buy, works with a host of third party apps and accessories including the Apple Watch. The onboard sensors measure heart rate, heart rate recovery and measure running metrics like cadence and stride.
Unlike the Smart, Astroskin is clearly aimed at serious health monitoring and should help get people more used to wearing smart garments. We're still waiting for that big smart clothing explosion, and the analysts keep on telling us it's going to happen. Hexoskin will surely be hoping it can play its part to make this happen.
How we test
By Michael Sawh
Michael Sawh has been covering the wearable tech industry since the very first Fitbit landed back in 2011. Previously the resident wearable tech expert at Trusted Reviews, he also marshaled the features section of T3.com.
He also regularly contributed to T3 magazine when they needed someone to talk about fitness trackers, running watches, headphones, tablets, and phones.
Michael writes for GQ, Wired, Coach Mag, Metro, MSN, BBC Focus, Stuff, TechRadar and has made several appearances on the BBC Travel Show to talk all things tech.
Michael is a lover of all things sports and fitness-tech related, clocking up over 15 marathons and has put in serious hours in the pool all in the name of testing every fitness wearable going. Expect to see him with a minimum of two wearables at any given time.