Alphabet’s Verily is reportedly stitching together a pair of health-tracking shoes

The company is said to be searching for a co-pilot on the wearable project
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Verily, Alphabet's life sciences arm, is reportedly working on a pair of smart shoes that track movement, weight, and detect falls.

Per a report from CNBC's Christina Farr, the company has already built a design prototype, which it hopes will lure a partner to help Verily bring the smart shoes to market.

Read this: The future of smart running shoes

The shoes will have sensors capable of monitoring weight changes in the wearer. The report speculates this could be used to detect a sudden weight gain, which can be indicative of the body retaining fluid, a symptom of congestive heart failure.

Verily is also looking to embed fall-detection technology, which could be a useful feature for the elderly especially. Apple recently put similar tech into the Apple Watch Series 4.

We've seen a few smart shoes and socks from companies like Under Armour and Sensoria, but to date most of them have focused on running and fitness. Startup Siren has also made a pair of socks that alert diabetics when they might have a foot injury.

Verily needs a good partner to make this work. From the report it sounds like these shoes could well be a product aimed at seniors, which may play a part in who Verily teams up with. It needs a manufacturer, but it also needs the right marketer.

It won't be the first partnership Google's sister company has sparked up. It's currently working with Dexcom on miniaturized glucose monitors, and last year teamed up with Wallgreens to lower the cost of care for chronic conditions.


Alphabet’s Verily is reportedly stitching together a pair of health-tracking shoes

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Hugh Langley

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Now at Business Insider, Hugh originally joined Wareable from TechRadar where he’d been writing news, features, reviews and just about everything else you can think of for three years.

Hugh is now a correspondent at Business Insider.

Prior to Wareable, Hugh freelanced while studying, writing about bad indie bands and slightly better movies. He found his way into tech journalism at the beginning of the wearables boom, when everyone was talking about Google Glass and the Oculus Rift was merely a Kickstarter campaign - and has been fascinated ever since.

He’s particularly interested in VR and any fitness tech that will help him (eventually) get back into shape. Hugh has also written for T3, Wired, Total Film, Little White Lies and China Daily.


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