Google’s life science research division has developed an experimental wristband that can track health. Unlike the Apple Watch or the FitBit, this not meant to be a consumer device – rather, for use in clinical trials and drug tests.
“Our intended use is for this to become a medical device that’s prescribed to patients or used for clinical trials,” Andy Conrad, head of the life sciences team at Google, told Bloomberg.
The device measures pulse, heart rhythm, skin temperature, as well as environmental data like light and noise exposure. It gives researchers and doctors realtime information on how a patient is doing, Bloomberg reports:
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Google offers health-monitoring smartwatch features in its Android Wear software platform for consumers, through partners such as LG Electronics Inc. Apple Inc. and others also have smartwatches and devices with health features. Yet most existing consumer devices aren’t rigorous enough for research, said Conrad.
That’s where Google X may play a role. The laboratory was set up to tackle big projects with the potential for long-term payoffs, such as driverless cars, wind turbines and delivery drones. The life sciences division has already created an experimental contact lens that can read blood sugar levels in diabetics. Like the contact lens, the wristband gathers information continuously.
Google is flush with wearables in development – take the eyeglass-like Google Glass, and the contact lenses it’s developing to gauge blood sugar levels for diabetics.
The underlying idea for such a wristband would be to help healthy people pick up on early signs of disease.
“I envision a day, in 20 or 30 years, where physicians give it to all patients,” Conrad told Bloomberg. “Prevention means all the time.”
Trials to test the band for regulatory approval will begin this summer.
