Wearable tech needs more personal actionable human insights

LifeBeam’s CEO explains the importance of biometrics in the next gen of wearables
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Wearable tech is great. It lets us track our steps, accurately measure the distances of our runs, works out whether we're sleeping ok, and even quantifies our sex lives.

But there's a lot of data produced that regular people don't know what to do with and LifeBeam wants to change that.

"LifeBeam was founded five years ago with the vision of creating actionable human insights," explains CEO Omri Yoffe. "In other words, not only measuring biometrics and creating bio-sensing tech for wearables, but being able to extract a wide range of meaningful and valuable data sets out of the body, and have it personalised in a compelling way."

LifeBeam began life in the aerospace domain creating sensors for hi-tech helmets for pilots, astronauts and the special forces; sensing critical vitals like heart rate, SPO2, blood flow and physical activity during activities.

Wearable tech needs more personal actionable human insights

In 2013 it branched out to the consumer market, offering up smart helmets, hats and visors. But these products are really just show homes for the next gen bio-tech the company wants to implant into cross-branded consumer wearables.

Yoffe explains that his company's tech can be built into existing wearable form factors as well as embryonic genres like smart textiles.

"Actionable human insights should be able to sit upon any wearable that we sit on top of, whether that be a watch, an earbud or your clothing," he told us. "It's additional software that works with any type of physical sensor.

"This is a new generation of solution whereby any type of product you buy, without you even knowing, will not only have a sensor for extracting your data but will also have software that you can update over the air to get more valuable insights.

"The vision of the company is not only to focus on the devices or the sensors only but making sure that we are bringing to the customer a compelling, non-intrusive and seamless way to get biometrics and bio-insights.

Biometrics mind blowers: Sensors at the heart of our wearable future

The company claims to have a number of high profile brands lined up for collaborations with, building on and expanding the joint ventures we've already seen.

"We've created a number of cool and interesting partnerships with consumer electronics companies such as Samsung that you will soon see at CES," said Yoffe.

"We powered Samsung's Simband platform, the reference developers' platform for smartwatches and I can tell you there are a number of watches, more than three, powered by us, that are going to be launched at the upcoming CES and additionally Samsung is going to do one soon."

Yoffe wouldn't talk specifics, or how many of those devices would be Samsung branded, but we wouldn't be surprised to find that LifeBeam tech has been packed into the forthcoming Samsung Gear S2.

Wearable tech needs more personal actionable human insights

However, the Israeli company's founder thinks that the future for bio-sensing lies away from the wrist.

"'Hearables' is a buzzword but the ear is one of the most rich and insightful places on the body to work with," he explained. "The ear has much more richness in terms of physiology and user experience and you can create real technological jumps, unlike the wrist where we're seeing a lot of barriers. We will see awesome solutions and awesome experiences in the world of hearables."

Essential reading: The future of hearables

Roll on January 2016, we're intrigued to see what partnerships and devices LifeBeam has lined up for CES.


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Paul Lamkin

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Wareable Media Group co-CEO Paul launched Wareable with James Stables in 2014, after working for a variety of the UK's biggest and best consumer tech publications including Pocket-lint, Forbes, Electric Pig, Tech Digest, What Laptop, T3 and has been a judge for the TechRadar Awards. 

Prior to founding Wareable, and subsequently The Ambient, he was the senior editor of MSN Tech and has written for a range of publications.


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