EAST HAMPTON, N.Y. — After several quarters of weak sales growth for its legacy fitness trackers, Fitbit unveiled a smartwatch this week as it seeks to deliver more comprehensive health and fitness services to keep pace with the competition. When Fitbit Ionic hits store shelves in October, it will be among a number of smart, wrist-based devices that represent a pivot from the more simplistic days of step counting into broader health monitoring. Fitbit released ambitious plans to begin using the data it’s collecting to predict and help prevent medical disorders and diseases.
To get started down this road, Fitbit introduced a new subscription-based service with the Ionic called Fitbit Coach, which provides users with personalized guided training programs that will adapt workouts based on a user’s previous interaction with the device and their personal goals.
“Now we can draw all these inferences about what you’re doing to be healthy and what you can do better and provide you with things to guide you,” said Ramon Llamas, the research manager of wearables and mobile phones for industry tracker IDC.
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But at an exclusive media event in Montauk last week, Fitbit gave a hint of what may be coming in the future, including far more in-depth analyses about a person’s overall health and wellness profile.
Through the long-term collection of a person’s data, Fitbit will ultimately be able to compare a person to themselves and to others of nearly identical profiles, which would make it easier to spot unusual health patterns to prevent or treat things such as cardiovascular disease or sleep apnea.
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“What if they’re able to take all that data and say: ‘Judging from the data we’re collecting about you, we believe you’re a candidate for some kind of chronic disease later in life,’” Llamas said. “If you’re looking at this chronic disease, wouldn’t you find value in knowing that so you can reduce or mitigate the risk altogether? That’s the end game that Fitbit is trying to accomplish.”
Fitbit already boasts having the largest collection of sleep data in the world with more than 5 billion nights of sleep tracked in the past 10 years. The Ionic’s new SpO2 sensor can determine changes in oxygen levels in a person’s blood, which can help patients more quickly determine when their breathing is being interrupted repeatedly during sleep. Of the 10 percent of adult Americans that have sleep apnea, 80 percent are unaware they have it. And yet, the disorder is correlated to health issues such as diabetes and high blood pressure, according to Dr. Conor Heneghan, Fitbit’s director of research.
“Some things we’re already actively working on are cardiac health, chronic diseases, stress/well-being and sleep apnea,” Heneghan said.
Of course, Fitbit isn’t the only company working on this, nor is it the farthest along in this evolution. Earlier this month, Lenovo began licensing a Personal Activity Intelligence (PAI) technology from Mio Global for its wearable devices, which provides an accurate reflection of the body’s response to physical activity and it can contribute to overall health.
In an article published in The American Journal of Medicine last September, researchers determined that people who maintained a PAI score at or above 100 received “maximum health benefits” and lived on average five years longer than those who were inactive.
Apple Watch has also been doubling down on the health and medical benefits of its smartwatch through the ResearchKit and HealthKit software packages that enable developers to make use of the sensors and biometric data Apple’s collecting to aid healthcare professionals.
“Up until recently, is was impossible to capture the collection of broader external factors and resulting changes continuously happening within daily life, but the widespread adoption of mobile, wearables and IoT devices with an increasingly sophisticated set of sensors is empowering people to take a more active role in tracking and managing their health,” said Scott Lachut, president of research and strategy at PSFK, a business intelligence service that recently published a report on the future of healthcare.
Adding to that, PSFK Founder Piers Fawkes said the sector has an “unparalleled opportunity to take advantage of massive data, networked analysis, sensor technology and bespoke production capabilities to deliver always-on healthcare that responds to the patient’s needs.”
What this boils down to, according to Llamas, is providing patients with information they don’t already know but could benefit from learning. It’s not just about giving users access to past data, such as how many steps they took that day, but analyzing long-term trends so they can take preventative measures.
“It’s one thing if devices tell us about things we’ve already done — steps, calories etc.,” he said. “But the big thing for me is, if you have all that information about me, what can you tell me about me that I don’t already know yet?”