Although Apple has been rumored to be delving into the wearable health market with the Healthbook app that will be ready with iOS 8 and the iWatch (although the biometric earpods are not happening), Samsung may beat it to the masses with not just a device, but a whole platform for other companies to utilize.
The company is working on what is being called the Simband. It is also being dubbed as a health watch or a digital watch design to track biometrics for athletes, such as heart rate and blood pressure in real time.
It contains various sensors within it that project beams of light into the skin at varying strengths that get biometric feedback from wearers. The watch displays various wave forms that show this feedback to the athletes as they are tracking their performance during runs or other activities.
Simband also comes with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity to allow it to communicate with other devices, such as smartphones, or the Web/cloud. It is powered by a 2X ARM chip and also contains a battery charger that fits on the back of the wristband, but is small and comfortable on the wrist to the wearers, says MedCityNews.
The reference design behind the Simband comes from open source hardware and software that Samsung wants to market to other developers and manufacturers. The company is said to be working on and ready to release APIs and an SDK later this year related to the health platform. If true, it can definitely beat competitors such as Apple to the market, depending on when iOS 8 hits.
Wearable devices and smart watches have been gaining momentum and Samsung is in a position to generate a lot of interest and capture a market early on. Many smart watches and wearables have been focusing on things such as music, apps and not so much on biometrics or health focus. Thus, Simband can definitely make its presence felt in terms of wearable health devices.
Samsung is also planning on storing data for users related to their health in the cloud with this upcoming platform and may even broaden the project up to share the data with health professionals. The cloud-based platform is called SAMI or Samsung Architecture Multimodal Interaction. This may worry some privacy pundits, but Samsung says it will not own the data, just store it for users or other professionals to access.
The project definitely seems interesting and if enough other developers, health professionals or companies, and hardware manufacturers in the wearable market come on board it could have a winner here. It will remain to be seen exactly how it functions and how the software and hardware function together. Expect Apple and others to respond with their own projects as well, though.
