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WEARABLE TECHNOLOGY

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Not just jewellery for geeks and gadgets for fitness fanatics

Investment in wearable tech and valuable data collection

Fashion teams up with tech for winning wearablesP03 P10 P16

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Overview

Right now much of the hype around wearable technol-ogy focuses on consumer

devices – think Apple Watch, Google Glass, and devices from Pebble, Jaw-bone and Fitbit. But many industry watchers believe it will be business-es and not consumers that will drive the wearables trend.

Among them is J.P. Gownder, an analyst at IT market research firm Forrester Research. “The market for company-provided wearables will be larger than the consumer market in the next five years,” he predicts. Wearables, he says, “have the poten-tial to change the way organisations and workers conduct business.”

Another believer is Duncan Stew-art, a research director at manage-ment consultancy Deloitte. “The rationale for enterprise use of wear-ables makes a great deal of sense,” he says. “There are a huge number of jobs where people need to be able to work hands-free, but receive information at the same time. These jobs provide pressing business-use cases for en-terprise wearables, with tremendous return on investment potential.”

Take, for example, a busy ware-house. “You’ve got workers driv-ing forklift trucks with two hands, attempting to navigate their way around aisles of shelving, often poorly signposted,” says Mr Stewart. “Meanwhile, the specific item they’ve been asked to retrieve may be in the

wrong place, or it may be in the right place, but three aisles up, four rows over and behind two other objects.”

Here, he says, a head-mounted, augmented reality display, showing the worker where the item is and the best route to reach it, could slash re-trieval times and boost productivity.

At online food retailer Ocado, chief technology officer Paul Clarke is keeping a close eye on the wear-ables trend. The company oper-ates two main customer fulfilment centres, in Hatfield, Hertfordshire and Dordon, Warwickshire, 15 re-gional “spokes” nationwide and a fleet of more than 800 delivery vans. There’s “massive” potential, he says, to use wearable technolo-gies to provide warehouse staff and drivers with a constant stream of hands-free, up-to-the-minute in-formation relating to the specific task or delivery they’re working on. So much so, in fact, that behind the scenes, Ocado IT staff are already working on speculative develop-ment projects for Google Glass and other wearables.

“And it’s not just the watches and the headsets – that’s just scratching the surface,” he says. “There’s also smart apparel and fabrics, too, for example. We could do all sorts of things with this technology.”

Healthcare is another area where there is plenty of scope for wearable technologies to take off. Already

there’s great excitement in the sector around early deployments of connected devices that are im-planted into, attached to or worn by patients to monitor cardiac con-ditions, blood pressure levels and sleep patterns, for example.

But medical staff could be equipped with wearable technolo-gies, too. A headset worn by a sur-geon, for instance, could update them with information on a pa-tient’s vital signs during surgery, as well as capture footage of the oper-ation for use as a teaching tool for

students. Any device with a camera, in fact, could allow medical staff to scan barcodes or smart tags to iden-tify patients, bring up their medical record and check the right medica-tions, in the right doses, are being administered.

The potential applications are almost limitless – smart jackets for firefighters that sense the presence of toxic gases or flammable chemi-cals, smart watches for manufactur-ing-plant workers that alert them when stocks of a particular com-ponent need replenishing, smart headsets for retail workers that let them know, in a non-intrusive, cus-tomer-friendly way, that a clean-up is needed in aisle three.

Motorola Solutions, meanwhile, offers seven different wearables for public safety officials, such as police officers. These include a biometric monitoring device that can identi-fy when an officer is in distress or

injured and a wearable sensor that alerts armed officers when their guns are unlocked.

However, there are currently sub-stantial barriers to adoption. For Mr Clarke at Ocado, these include the cost of wearable devices, their lim-ited battery life and the substantial challenge of integrating new devices with existing back-end systems.

But there is still time for both technology vendors and end-user organisations to get their strategies straight, according to Mr Gownder at Forrester Research.

The years between 2014 and 2016, he says, will be for piloting and early adoption. “With vendors still work-ing to bring out offerings, we’ll re-main in the nascent stages for the next few years,” he predicts.

Between 2017 and 2019, weara-bles will start to go mainstream, as developers launch the necessary apps, back-end software and ser-vices needed to support enterprise wearables on a broader scale.

But by 2020, wearables will be “commonplace” among employees at many enterprises. There will be devices tailored to particular indus-tries, specific roles, even individual organisations. “For some business-es, wearable tools will become cen-tral to how their employees do their jobs,” Mr Gownder concludes. The wearable workplace, it seems, may be just around the corner.

Wearable devices are not just jewellery for geeks or gadgets for fitness fanatics – they are valuable tools for getting work done, writes Jessica Twentyman

Publishing ManagerMichael Kershaw

Managing EditorPeter Archer

Production ManagerNatalia Rosek

Commissioning EditorJeremy White

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Contributors

Distributed in

There are a huge number of jobs where people need to be able to work hands-free, but receive information at the same time

KIERAN ALGER

Editor-in-chief at Mediablaze and founder of Manvmiles.com, he covers fitness and technology trends for magazines and websites, including T3, Wareable.com, Men’s Health and Techradar.

KATE BEVAN

Broadcaster and freelance journalist, she specialises in technology and contributes to a wide range of national publications, including The Guardian.

HENRY FARRAR-HOCKLEY

Regular contributor to WIRED, he also writes on technology for The Wall Street Journal Europe, The Sunday Telegraph, Esquire and Boat International.

KATHLEEN HALL

Freelance journalist, she contributes to a range of publications, including the Financial Times, The New York Times, Computer Weekly and Retail Week.

LEO KING

Freelance journalist, he was news editor at Computerworld UK and deputy editor at IT Europa, and now contributes regularly to the Financial Times and Forbes.

PAUL LAMKIN

Founder and editor-in-chief of Wareable.com, he was a contributing editor on Pocket-lint and senior editor of MSN Tech.

ROB LANGSTON

News editor of HFM Week, he was associate editor of Fund Web, the specialist news and features service for investment advisers.

CHARLES ORTON-JONES

Former Professional Publishers Association Business Journalist of the Year, he was editor-at-large of LondonlovesBusiness.com and editor of EuroBusiness magazine.

JESSICA TWENTYMAN

Business and technology writer, she contributes to a wide range of publications, including the Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal Europe, Director and Retail Week.

WELCOME TO THEWEARABLE WORKPLACE

Image: Getty

8mPEOPLE IN BRITAIN HAVE SOME SORT OF WEARABLE TECHNOLOGY

53%SAY WEARABLE TECH HELPS THEM FEEL MORE IN CONTROL OF THEIR LIVES

33%SAY IT HAS HELPED THEIR CAREER DEVELOPMENT

Source: Goldsmiths, University of London

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WEARABLE TECHNOLOGY25/09/14EDITION #0277

History

HISTORY OF WEARABLE TECHNOLOGY

1975 PULSAR CALCULATOR WATCH

1979 SONY WALKMAN

1984 CASIO DATABANK CD-40

1987 DIGITAL HEARING AID

2011 JAWBONE UP

2006 NIKE+ iPOD KIT

2007 APPLE iPHONE

2008 FITBIT

The idea of wearable technology is nothing new and can be traced back to the 19th century, as Paul Lamkin reports

Academia is littered with forward-thinkers pre-dicting a communication

revolution centred on devices worn on the self, while the popular media have been throwing up ideas of how these gadgets might look and oper-ate for decades.

But we’re finally at a point where these prophecies are ringing true. The recent unveiling of the Apple Watch is just an early breakthrough of mainstream attention for an in-dustry that may well be in its infan-cy, but one that has been bubbling away for more than 60 years and is set to explode like no technological revolution has ever done before.

A recent report from CCS Insight forecast that the wearable market was set to expand from 9.7 million device shipments in 2013 to 135 mil-lion in 2018; and IT analysts Canalys gave weight to those forecasts by re-vealing that the wearable smartband

market had rocketed an incredible 684 per cent, year-on-year, for the first half of 2014.

But while these figures suggest that we’re reaching a tipping point for the wearable tech industry, where novelty gives way to necessi-ty, the signs of a genuine paradigm shift for the connected self haven’t just sprung up in the last couple of years since the likes of Google and Apple realised the potential.

COMPUTING FOR THE MASSES

In the late-1980s, Mark Weiser, chief scientist at Xerox PARC, was credited with coining the phrase “ubiquitous computing”. He sug-gested that a third wave of comput-ing was beginning to take shape; a movement that would see personal technology escaping the confines of the desktop and receding into the backgrounds of our lives.

In 2006, American author Adam

Greenfield suggested that Mr Wei-ser’s intent for this statement was that technology could expand func-tions, such as information-sensing, processing and networking to things not considered hi-tech at that point, such as clothing. It’s a suggestion Don Norman, a cognitive science academic, had put forward in 1999 when he said ambient technology would become more personal and wearable, and that new devices would allow us to interact uncon-sciously with embedded environ-mental technology.

For anyone who’s ever worn a Misfit Shine or a Fitbit Flex for days on end without ever really noticing it was there, while it recorded an array of personal information, it’ll seem obvious that the time is now.

It was around this era that visions of wearable technology were being widely adumbrated in the mass media. And it’s surprising just how

accurate some of these media fore-casts turned out to be.

GLIMPSE OF THE FUTURE

Watch an episode of Knight Rider and you’ll see Michael Knight inter-acting with his sensor-laden wrist-band, which packs in voice-control functionality, and is not all that different from the Sony SmartBand Talk. Or check out Back to The Fu-ture II and you’ll witness Marty Mc-Fly Junior donning a JVC-branded virtual reality (VR) headset not dissimilar to the Gear VR device Samsung recently unveiled to the market.

It’s entirely possible the percep-tion of wearable tech and, as such, the public’s appetite for its potential was fuelled by these eighties and nineties media portrayals, and that TV and cinema essentially shaped the culture of wearable devices in the real world. After all, many of

Source: BeyondCurious

While wearable technology is the most prolific trend in the tech industry today, its origins go back in history with wearable inventions that revolutionised the way we see and track life. From activity-tracking fitness bands to Google Glass and Oculus Rift, big brands are getting involved in the once-niche technology. Our timeline shows how it all started…

WEARABLE TECH TIMELINE

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History

1993 APPLE NEWTON PDA

1999 FIRST BLACKBERRY

2012 NIKE FUELBAND

2012 PEBBLE WATCH

2013 NISSAN NISMO SMARTWATCH

2013 MISFIT SHINE

2013 GOOGLE GLASS

2013 SAMSUNG GALAXY GEAR

2014 APPLE WATCH

2000 FIRST BLUETOOTH HEADSET

2001 APPLE iPOD

2003 VIATRON C-SERIES

2004 GOPRO CAMERA

the engineers currently employed in the R&D labs of Silicon Valley and beyond would have grown up having these images engraved into their subconscious.

But you have to go back further than the 1980s for examples of wearables in both real life and the media. The 1927 Plus Four Wrist-let Route Indicator would help you navigate using moveable scroll map cartridges, almost 90 years before Google Now started directing peo-ple on Android Wear smartwatches. And the 1960 Telesphere Mask was patented by Morton Heilig some 53 years before Oculus attempted to take his idea of a virtual reality headset to the masses.

The idea of a smartwatch for making and receiving calls out-dates even that. The wrist-radio, worn by Dick Tracy and one of his comic’s most recognisable icons, was first seen in 1946. And on

American television, The Jetsons were streaming live TV on their watches as early as 1962.

RIGHT PLACE AT RIGHT TIME

The driving force behind the boom in wearable technology, of course, is the advancement in hard-ware, both in terms of affordability and practicality. Earlier this year, ARM Holdings chief executive Si-mon Segars told tech website CNET that even small companies could create hit products now because the sensors and processors required to power low-powered wearable de-vices were so easily available. “Be-cause it is inexpensive to put some of these products together, it does open the door for new companies,” he says.

The current crop of wearable technology genres – fitness track-ers, smart bands, smartwatches, VR headsets and augmented reality

(AR) spectacles – aren’t necessari-ly new ideas. In fact many of these genres and some of their biggest selling products are many genera-tions old.

The difference now is there is an appetite in the mass market for them, coinciding with a point in time where the hardware is making media and academic prophecies a much more realistic proposition. As Mr Weiser suggested, ubiquitous computing would only succeed at a time when devices were submissive enough to recede into the back-grounds of our lives.

MOVING WITH THE TIMES

Of course, the very definition of wearable technology is changing all the time. The term is evolving at an incredible pace as a seemingly nev-er-ending conveyor belt of new form factors emerges. Surely hearing aids, which have been around since 1898,

and headphones, popularised in the 1980s during the Walkman boom, are both examples of existing, suc-cessful wearable technology?

Of course they are and it’s pleas-ing to see these old masters of the wearable world influencing the new breed of connected devices. Sound-hawk, Cupertino-based neighbours of Apple, recently unveiled its smart-listening device – a hearing aid designed even for people with good hearing that boasts adaptive audio processing, which is capable of cutting through background noise and elevating just the sounds you need to hear.

And the Avegant Glyph has taken the basic premise of audio head-phones and given it a visual twist for the 21st century. The Glyph is a head-mounted display that promis-es to deliver a visual experience of the kind of realism and clarity that you’ve never had before. There’s

no screen, pictures are project-ed directly on to your eyes from a low-powered LED bulb, presenting smooth pixel-free visuals. A far cry from the tinny headphones Sony boxed with its original Walkmans.

The idea of wearable technology is in no way a new one, but we’re fi-nally arriving at a point where years of research and development is pay-ing dividends, where the hardware is both accomplished and economical-ly viable enough for the visionaries’ conceptions to enter mass produc-tion, and for the results to prolifer-ate the mainstream consumer con-sciousness.

So while you may be hearing a lot more about wearable technology as of late, it’s key to remember that what we’re seeing now is merely the first fruits of a cultural and social shift that’s been a long time coming.

And you thought wearables were just a fad.

2004 MOTOROLA RAZR

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WEARABLE TECHNOLOGY25/09/14EDITION #0277P06

Wearables for Fitness

Page 09

of the results improves treatment and research.

There is also a “huge potential” for tailored smart watches and oth-er wearables to help with mental health by tracking movement and environmental interaction, notes Silvia Piai, research manager at IDC Health Insights.

The elderly can equally benefit, particularly from smart watches and smart clothing, which can measure heart rate, temperature, posture, movement and other factors. Dr James Amor, a research fellow at the University of Warwick, says ac-tivity-monitoring allows families and carers to see the elderly per-son’s health and routine, and brings “higher levels of confidence to the user, enabling them to live in their own home for longer”.

Gadgets traditionally aimed at fitness, such as Fitbit wristbands, and watches by Polar and Samsung, plus the new Apple Watch, could soon contain much more advanced healthcare and disease manage-ment tec hnology.

Google itself is working with pharmaceutical business Novartis to create smart contact lenses for dia-betes patients. The prototype lenses, equipped with wafer thin microcir-cuits, measure insulin levels on the eyeball, and alert patients’ mobile phones when action is needed. No-vartis chief executive Joe Jimenez says wearable tech will increasingly “manage human diseases”.

Pharmaceutical firms are keen to effect this change because they face declining revenue streams. “These companies have a real issue around the lack of blockbuster pills,” explains Ms Piai. “Disease-management tech-nology is becoming a focus.”

Technology companies, such as Proteus, are working on stomach juice-powered, ingestible radio-fre-quency identification (RFID)-equipped pills, which transmit mes-sages when a tablet has been taken. A spokesperson at the company says the tablets help doctors “gain insight into patient behaviour be-tween visits”. Other companies are working on smart skin patches that can monitor vital signs and even re-lease drugs.

The treatment and cost benefits cannot be overlooked by healthcare providers, but they need to take sev-eral important steps.

Wearable healthcare take-up in the UK lags behind other mature markets. Deloitte’s Ms Taylor says that in the US, where people are paying for their healthcare or in-surance, “there is a direct financial incentive to do what it takes to mon-itor your own health better”.

Hospitals may need to help pa-tients overcome concerns around costs and data security through clear communication and even by prescribing some devices.

FINANCIAL INCENTIVES

Another way round these issues is to provide financial incentives and some healthcare settings are consid-ering rewarding patients for using the devices – a move funded by the reduction in costs from better treat-ment. Massimiliano Claps, research director at IDC Health Insights, says: “Look at the long-term bill – spend-ing on the devices makes disease management much more affordable.”

There is a more serious threat to patients if they do not use the de-vices to remain healthy, particular-ly in markets without state-funded healthcare. “Imagine a scenario in which insurance companies decline to provide cover,” Ms Taylor warns.

Patients’ adherence to using the technology is a further concern. Mr Claps says: “We often find patients stick with the device for a month or two and then usage tails off.” Again, communication and incentives are vital.

The industry must work to over-come technological issues, too, and the most serious is the proprietary nature of many systems. Mr Claps says that some of the fitness device makers, such as Fitbit, Samsung and Apple, see the potential in the healthcare market and may consid-er making their systems more open for specific purposes.

A technological transformation is taking place, and hospitals, clinics and doctors will need to work with patients and technology providers to move with the change. While weara-bles will not replace care or clinical judgment, Ms Taylor concludes, they “support staff to work completely differently and really help patients manage their condition”.

Detailed monitoring of dis-ease will enable doctors to understand and treat

patients’ conditions with greater success. Some hospitals in the UK, Western Europe and the United States are already in early-stage tri-als, but others are lagging behind. The coming era of smarter health-care cannot be ignored, experts say.

More than six million such devic-es were shipped last year, including those for both medical health and fitness, IDC figures show, and by 2018 over 100 million will be sold annually. The proportion of that figure comprising medical devices has not been quantified, given the early stages of the change, but it is expected to soar.

“Increasingly, even the patients will be asking doctors for wear-able devices,” says Karen Taylor, research director at consultancy Deloitte.

Wearables are being piloted in different settings to help patients with Parkinson’s disease, diabetes, heart conditions, high blood pres-sure and other illnesses, as well as to help the elderly live longer, inde-pendent lives at home.

The technology could also pro-vide £6.5 billion in annual NHS savings, according to PA Consulting Group, from reduced appointments and hospital stays. NHS Scotland has made substantial investments in remote healthcare and is thought to be a likely candidate for the earliest adoption.

TECHNOLOGY TRANSFORMATION

Smart watches lead the way, because of their ability to track movement, posture and gait. Most recently, Back to the Future actor Michael J. Fox announced that his Parkinson’s foundation is working with Intel to supply patients with the devices.

Todd Sherer, chief executive at The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, describes the illness as a “24/7 condition”, add-ing that wearable systems “provide objective data on the continuous lived experience”. Big data analysis

Wearables are being piloted to help patients with Parkinson’s disease, diabetes, heart conditions, high blood pressure and other illnesses

Wearable technology, from smart watches and contact lenses, to smart textiles and ingestible radio-frequency identification pills, can transform healthcare, writes Leo King

Image: Philips Healthcare

Proof-of-concept project to explore the potential of connecting Philips IntelliVue patient monitoring solutions with Google Glass technology

Healthcare

CARING WITH WHATYOU’RE WEARING

$2trn

5m

COULD BE SAVED WORLDWIDE A YEAR BY 2025 WITH A 10-20% CUT IN THE COST OF TREATING CHRONIC DISEASES THROUGH USING MOBILE SENSORS

PATIENTS WORLDWIDE ARE FORECAST TO BE USING WEARABLE TECHNOLOGY AND REMOTE MONITORING DEVICES BY 2017

Source: McKinsey

Source: HIS


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Commercial Feature


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Commercial Feature

Contactless wristband to end ‘card clash’A new wristband for contactless payment is set to make life a lot easier, says Barclaycard

Other forms of ID can be woven into bPay. Gym membership is a possible candidate. Gym-goers often like to run to their local workout, but currently need to carry a wallet with them. When bPay incorporates the gym card this won’t be required. And what else? Music festival tickets, coffee house vouchers, school lunch bands for the kids and university ID cards could all be incorporated on to bPay. If, that is, the user consents, and merchants, brands and organisations have the foresight to see where this technology is heading.

Naturally there are some security questions around such groundbreaking technology. The answers tend to be the same as with debit and credit cards. Lose bPay and you can cancel it, just as you do with a card. Encryption tech-nology makes it incredibly hard to clone. And it’s even better than a card in that there are no customer details on it. If it is stolen, the threat of identity theft is thereby reduced.

Just like contactless cards, there are no charges to the user for paying with bPay. And it’s open to everyone, regard-

less of who they bank with – any UK Visa or MasterCard® debit or credit card can be linked to it.

Users should be reassured by the Barclaycard brand. Barclaycard launched chip and PIN on to the market, the fi rst ATM, the first credit card and brought contactless payments to the UK. With 36 million customers it has the size, and duty, to test new technologies to exacting standards. This is not a gizmo produced by a publicity hungry startup.

So are we entering a cardless society? Barclaycard’s chief of digital payments Mike Saunders says: “Wearable payment devices are becoming increasingly pop-ular as they’re a fast, secure and easy way to pay. Consumers tell us they want more than one function from their wear-ables. Payment capability is just one ingredient and there are a wide range of potential applications – access, loyalty, branding, affi liation and recognition.

“We’ve been running trials of the fore-runners to the bPay band for the past two years at closed events and for a limited time. The feedback from this – and the fact that we saw regular demand

payments made using contactless on London buses

terminals in the UK accept contactless

300,000

20m

from trialists to be able to use the devic-es after these events had fi nished – was enough to satisfy us that consumers are ready to embrace this technology, so long as it works for them on a number of levels.”

An important factor, which is likely to help bPay compete with rival payment types, is fashion. A number of designers have shown interest in remodelling the band to create haute-couture jewellery. High street brands are also keen to give bPay band a make-over. After all, it won’t be long until wearable payment devices are as common as a wristwatch. So they ought to look as wonderful as they perform.

For more information or to sign up for a bPay band, please visit www.bpayband.co.uk

YEAR-ON-YEAR GROWTH IN CONTACTLESS VOLUME AND VALUENumber of contactless cards

48macross UK

1 in 2in London

7.3m£46.9m

23.8m£158.5m

238%growth

Consumers tell us they want more than one function from

their wearables

Industry contactless growth

Growth in contactless spend across 12 months to June 2014

Volume Value

2013

2014

You can hear the groans. Some poor fool is causing a tailback. They are trying to pay for their morning travel journey, but the card reader isn’t hav-ing any of it. They're putting their wal-let fi rmly down and have stepped back from the gates, but by having more than one card in the wallet or purse, they’re not getting anywhere.

It’s “card clash”. The commuter will have to pull the right card out of the wallet and then touch it to the reader. Behind them a queue of commuters tuts and sighs.

Now that contactless payments have arrived at London Tube control gates, on trams, trains and buses, it’s a scene you’ll see more of on the capital’s busy transport network.

But it needn’t be that way. The new bPay band from Barclaycard will end card confl icts forever. Just touch your wrist on the bright yellow circle card reader and – green light – you are through. No rummag-ing in wallets, digging around in handbags or having to step back to allow the gates to reset. Just a split-second movement.

The bPay is the next evolution in con-tactless payment. And it works wherever you can pay using contactless – includ-ing, from this month, on the London transport network. bPay is a new way to pay, with a pre-paid account at its heart, which you link to a mini contact-less chip and put on your wrist for convenience.

The band can be used by the holders of any UK debit or credit card, not only Bar-claycard, with funds added either manually or automat-ically, when credit gets low, and your balance sent by text when you top up.

Smoother travel is just the start for bPay. You can use it to pay for drinks, newspapers, sandwiches, in fact anything for £20 and under wherever contactless payment is accepted, including Marks & Spencer, Starbucks, Pret A Manger, Mc-Donald’s, Eat and Boots.

It will eliminate the fiddling around with loose change or looking for your payment card in the depths of your bag while the queues build up behind, which slow transactions down and are the bane of shopkeepers.

How close are we to seeing bPay across the land? In fact, it’s already out there. bPay was trialled as a cash replacement at this summer’s Pride in London annual LGBT festival, and at the Barclaycard Presents British Summer Time concerts in Hyde Park. The result? Success – so much so that bPay is now being trialled on a much larger scale. A full public launch is scheduled for 2015.

The innovation won’t end there. After paying for travel and shopping, bPay will soon come to be used for a whole load of other applications. Football fans will be delighted to hear that season tickets, stadium access and payments on match day could all be incorporated into the one wristband. The old worry of losing your ticket, getting it soaking wet, for-getting it or having it stolen, are gone.

Fans will be able to gain access to the ground by using bPay on contact-less terminals.

for convenience.The band can be used by

the holders of any UK debit or credit card, not only Bar-claycard, with funds added either manually or automat-ically, when credit gets low, and your balance sent by text when you top up.

using bPay on contact-less terminals.


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SALES PERFORMANCE 17/09/14EDITION #0274

When Germany smashed in their ex-tra-time winner in this year’s FIFA World Cup™ final in Rio, a “never to be forgotten” moment in time was created for millions. For the coach-es, it was a dramatic endorsement of their methods, in particular their use of the wearable technology pi-oneered by adidas.

The German football association, together with performance consultancy EXOS, relied on adidas miCoach Elite Team System (ETS) to monitor players during training.

Not that the technology gave Ger-many an unfair advantage. After all, the Argentina team facing them in the final, featuring Lionel Messi, were also honed using the same adidas technology.

So what is this system? And how is it being used by two of the best teams in the world?

In a nutshell, the adidas miCoach ETS measures player performance in real time. Players are rigged up with monitor-ing devices which relay biometric infor-mation back to tablet computers held by the coaches.

The ETS tracks speed, distance run, acceleration, heart rate and power. As footballers leap, sprint, shoot and run, the staff can identify who is doing what as the session unfolds.

Darcy Norman of EXOS explains: “One of the key metrics we track is power – how much power a player pro-duces relative to their physiologic re-

sponse to that power output. The more power a player generates during an exercise without burning too much ener-gy, the more efficient and fit they are. If they generate a low power number with a large metabolic response, we know they’re fatiguing and that we need to keep a close eye on them.”

The adidas miCoach software al-lows each player’s performance to be tracked over time. The approach takes the guesswork out of training.

adidas makes similar technology available for consumers at all levels and across multiple sports.

The adidas Speed Cell and X Cell are sensors that can be worn on the pitch or court in competitive play. Acting like a coach’s eyes on the sideline, they re-cord similar information to the ETS that can then be uploaded to a mobile app

for analysis after the game. Players can use this information to iden-tify strengths and weaknesses, and focus their training for the most performance gain.

The adidas Smart Run wrist watch measures the biomet-

ric levels of individual ath-letes in training. A GPS

tracks movement over the ground. An accelerometer counts every step, allowing stride rate to be regulat-ed. And an optical

heart-rate monitor in

Commercial Feature

Measure every heartbeat,every sprint, every kickSport, from elite football to running, is being transformed by wearable technology. Here’s some of the best on offer

the base of the watch opens up an en-tire field of cardio training, essential for effective endurance training.

The Smart Run watch has a large easy-to-read colour touchscreen so ath-letes can view all data during their ses-sion. But since it can be hard to focus on digits during a sprint, the Run Smart also

uses a LCD colour screen and unique colour-coded system to communicate performance levels at a glance. The screen colours change blue, green, yel-low or red, depending on the ferocity of the session in comparison to pre-set tar-gets. In a split second, the athlete knows whether to pick up the pace or ease up.

A Bluetooth® connection enables the use of a wireless headset which will aug-ment the visual guidance with audible narration and, with three-gigabyte ca-pacity for MP3s, lets the athlete listen to their favourite tunes. When the data is uploaded afterwards, the forensic anal-ysis begins.

The adidas miCoach web platform offers world-class data crunching. Log-in and you’ll be able to see a record of past performances in easy-to-read chart form. Crucially, miCoach offers a person-alised planning service. Pick a cardio plan and miCoach will help you set goals.

Want to add a few new moves to your workout routine? There are more than 400 different exercises in the miCoach database, complete with weight, repeti-tion and circuit recommendations.

For athletes who don’t need the GPS function, the Fit Smart watch is a low-er-cost sibling. The same miCoach anal-ysis is available, and the colour-coded system is delivered through bright LEDs to keep you motivated and guide you throughout your workout.

For iPhone, Android or Windows phone users, there’s free a miCoach app that offers much of the same function-ality on mobile devices and works as a great companion to the watches.

One final eye-catching innovation – footballers are told to love the ball, but they have never found out whether the ball loves them back... until now. The adidas Smart Ball is a match-quality size 5 football, but comes with integrat-ed sensors suspended in the middle of the ball. These sensors track the forc-es placed on the ball. Blast it and find

out how hard you

kicked. Add a little Beckham-esque swerve to your shot and it’ll tell you just what spin and power you applied.

The information is relayed instantly to the miCoach app on your smart-phone, so you can retrace precisely what you’ve done. If your knuckleball free kick isn’t getting that tell-tale dip, you’ll know why (clue: you’ll need zero spin, which is seriously tricky to master). The ball is available from adidas online and at Apple stores among other plac-es, and following rave reviews is set to be a huge hit this Christmas.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about this tech revolution is how dem-ocratic it is. An under-14 side can train with the same Smart Ball as the World Cup holders. A keen amateur runner can harness the same technology that gets elite athletes into peak condition.

These sensors really do work. All you have to do is start using them.

For more information visit www.micoach.adidas.com

Perhaps the most remarkable

thing about this tech revolution is how democratic it is


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Fitness

Fitness is in the throes of a technological revolution that is fundamentally changing what we wear, how we work out and our entire approach to wellness, as Kieran Alger reports

For years, pedometers, treadmills with TV screens and massive strap-on GPS

units were the cutting edge of fit-ness technology – in 2014 that’s all changing.

From sleep-tracking apps and fitness bands, to socks that improve your running and smart garments to monitor your breathing, smaller, more capable sensors, paired with smartphone connectivity, have put previously elite-level tech in reach of the average gym-goer.

It’s a white-hot market in every sense. Analysts at Canalys predict that 17 million wearable fitness bands will be sold in 2014, rising to 45 million by 2017, while figures from ABI Research forecast 99 million fitness wearables will be shipped annually by 2019.

In the last month alone, the fit-ness-focused Samsung Gear S and new Apple Watch have been launched, adding to products from sports brands including adidas and Nike.

Meanwhile newcomers, such as Wahoo, Fitbit and Withings, are fighting for market share with in-cumbents Polar, Garmin and others. Even companies such as Epson are launching tracking bands and run-ning watches.

This fierce competition is good for the industry, according to Kevin Abt, European sales and marketing director at Wahoo.

“Apple’s arrival means you now have one of the most influential companies in the world putting a firm stake in the ground saying you should care about fitness,” he says.

It’s not just technology for the sake of it either, as being enabled to track and share fitness stats is prov-en to keep people committed longer.

“Fitness technology gives you real control over your habits – it makes you accountable,” says Julie Syl-vester, producer of the Sports and Fitness Tech Summit at the annu-al Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

“It’s also fun. If someone is held accountable through a device, app or their social community, then they’re much more likely to stick to a fitness regimen,” she says.

Technogym, a major supplier of gym equipment, is harnessing its new internet-connected machines to add a new, socially competitive edge to workouts.

“We’ve used our MyWellness ac-tivity tracker, MyWellness Cloud and our internet-connected fitness equipment to create a global chal-lenge,” says Enrico Manaresi, inter-national public relations and media relations manager at Technogym.

“Our Let’s Move for a Better World challenge tracks gym-goers and re-wards the fitness centre whose mem-bers move the most. In each country the winner gets to donate a Techno-gym gym to a local school,” he says.

Friendly competition carries over into the workplace too. Employers are using emerging platforms to

Fitness technology gives you real control over your habits –

it makes you accountable

change the way they keep their staff healthy and productive.

“Businesses understand that if employees are fit, healthy and en-gaged they will perform,” says Glenn Riseley, founder of GCC, whose corporate wellness initiatives boast more than 300,000 participants in 180 countries.

“While gamification might not sound like something that’s appro-priate for a sophisticated employee, it absolutely is. It draws people into the activity and it distracts them from the one thing they thought was going to be inconvenient and difficult – moving,” he says.

It’s working too. Once someone gets past the first 60 to 90 days of the GCC step-counting programme, their average daily steps rocket from 3,000 to 13,000.

GAME-CHANGER

It’s not just consumers who will benefit from always-on monitoring, the elite sports world has plenty to gain too.

“You’ll be able to build masses of information over the course of a career,” says Andy Baker, chief exec-utive of Smartlife. “Once you’ve got data for the careers of some of the best footballers in the world, it’ll be-come easier to identify the traits you want in kids to make a good football-er. Then you take a lot of opinion out of football – it’ll be about raw facts.”

Access to this previously invisible data is already having an impact on sport at the very highest level. Stat-Sports Viper is a cutting-edge sports tracking system that combines

an accelerometer, GPS unit and a heart-rate chest strap with moni-toring software to create a detailed picture of a player’s performance.

It’s this technology which has won them an impressive list of cli-ents with 14 Premier League foot-ball teams, Barcelona and Juventus, as well as the England team.

“The ability to look precisely and objectively at what a player has been doing in training is a seismic shift,” says Jim McEneany, StatSports head of marketing. “At the recent World Cup, the England team would have had data from all the clubs who use StatSports, including Liverpool, Manchester United and Manchester City. From that they could see who has been doing more training, who needs more training or who maybe needs a rest.”

But no matter how far technolo-gy advances, the human touch will always be important, according to Giuseppe Minetti, founder of Pale-oGym.co.uk, a company which com-bines sports science and technology with personalised functional fitness and nutrition.

“Technology is a great tool for monitoring activity, but what tech-nology can never do is prescribe correct exercise on a daily basis for an individual, while taking into consideration the multitude of en-vironmental, physical, mental and emotional situations,” he says. “An experienced personal trainer can also encourage, motivate and, most importantly, listen. Technology is not good at listening.”

Source: Samsung mHealth, March 2014

WEARABLES ARETHE PERFECT FIT

REASONS FOR BUYING FITNESS WEARABLES

42%TO MEASURE AND IMPROVE HEALTH AND FITNESS

37%TO KEEP TRACK OF FITNESS GOALS

37%TO MONITOR CALORIES BURNT

30%TO KEEP MOTIVATED WITH HEALTH AND FITNESS

Image: Getty


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The feeling among technology entrepreneurs and investors is that the smart-watch phenomenon is probably just a fad

Investment

WHERE THE MONEY’S GOING IN WEARABLES

Venture capital and crowdfunding look set to propel investment in wearable technology and the potentially valuable collection of data from devices, writes Rob Langston

Apple’s launch of its smart watch made it the latest tech giant to enter the

wearable technology space. But un-like the California blue-chip technol-ogy giant, not everybody has access to billions of dollars in cash reserves.

For startups, funding can be difficult to come by with many not knowing where to turn for much-needed capital. Many good ideas remain on the drawing board due to risk-averse banks.

While self-funding can be an op-tion in the early stages, to gain trac-tion in the fast-moving and extremely competitive technology market, other sources of funding are often needed.

With global retail revenue from smart wearable devices set to reach $53.2 billion by 2019, according to technology analysts Juniper Re-search, it’s easy to see why investors might be tempted.

Increasingly, venture capital (VC) is one area where entrepreneurs seek startup capital.

“Investors are currently very ac-tive all over the place. The market is buoyant at the moment. VC funds are not short of cash, and looking to back across trends and specific industries and technologies,” says Stephan von Perger, an investor at London-based VC fund Wellington Partners. “Fun-damentally well-run and innova-tive companies that have ambitious founders are what we are looking for.”

It’s not just VC funds that are considering investing in early-stage wearables companies. Crowdfund-ing websites, such as Kickstarter and Indiegogo, have been instru-mental in getting projects off the

ground. As an example, the Pebble Watch was able to raise more than $10 million in pre-orders in 2012.

“Within the last 18 months or so there has been an increased interest from both consumers and investors in the wearable technology space,” says Nick Levine, head of business development at Crowd2fund.com.

TAX INCENTIVES

“Equity campaigns in the space usually qualify for HM Revenue & Customs’ Seed Enterprise Invest-ment Scheme, which offers gener-ous tax incentives. Such early-stage equity investments are high risk, but also potentially may be able to provide a huge return in the future.”

Despite the obvious conflict with VC, some investors have seen the advantages that crowdfunding can bring to startups.

“This is good for companies look-ing to get off the ground before VC money and expertise comes in, and I think this has been a positive trend rather than a threat to the VC indus-try as such. Crowdfunding has its uses in funding early-stage compa-nies, especially when there is prod-uct hardware risk, but it can’t pro-

vide the expertise and networks that VCs can,” Mr von Perger explains.

Although attention and funding has been focused on fitness wearables in recent years, lately the shift has been towards smart watches. As the Apple Watch buzz showed, there is demand for new products in this area. But some are already looking towards the next wave of wearable devices.

“The feeling among the technolo-gy entrepreneurs and investors I deal with is that the smart-watch phe-nomenon is probably just a fad,” says Ciaran Rooney, solicitor at law firm

Blake Morgan. “At a basic level, the watches duplicate the functions of smartphones or other existing prod-ucts, but have a less friendly interface and limited connectivity. Consumers will not be blind to these facts.”

Mr Rooney says there is real ex-citement around wearables with a medical or business application, and which monitor, record and re-port on personal health informa-tion. “Wearables with applications in difficult, dangerous or inefficient working environments also have huge potential,” he says.

There are a number of other areas where wearables might come to dom-inate, including clothing and “smart jewellery”.

DESIGN FOCUS

“Companies that previously fo-cused on technology are now buying in or tying up with companies that have design skills,” says Jonathan Jackson, intellectual property part-ner at D Young & Co. “For example, fashion accessory retailer Fossil and chip maker Intel are teaming up to develop wearable tech products.”

WEARABLE TECH MARKET ANALYSISPreliminary scenario forecast

Investment in wearable tech

$38,539,029 $87,788,497$671,762 26.7%

$10,076,435

7.5 7.8 8 8.5 8.59 1115

2025

11 1419

29

42

55

31

9

2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018

$27,655,397$22,558,000

$37,575,100

$733,291 23.5%

$24,931,877

$252,194 42.9%

$3,530,717

AVERAGE

TOTAL TOTAL

MONEYRAISED

VENTURECAPITALRAISED

CROWDFUNDING VENTURE

HEAD

WORST CASE

WRIST/HAND

LIKELY

BODY

OPTIMISTIC

60

50

40

30

20

10

0

BILL

ION

$US

Source: IHS 2014

Source: Flybridge Capital Partners

%

FUNDED


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Investment

difference between whether or not something will take off might, how-ever, be driven by quality of middle layers which process all the data and that is, of course, 100 per cent enter-prise stuff.”

FUNDING SOFTWARE

Indeed, hardware often requires levels of capital available to larger tech players or crowdfunded devel-opers, where delivery expectations are much later. For some investors, there is greater attraction to software backing up devices, where invest-

ment can be scalable and the product used across more than one device.

“The real value is in the software and network effect of a large user base. Jawbone has already amassed the biggest sleep study data set in his-tory. It is this data that is of interest to the healthcare industry, not the de-vice that collects it,” says Mark Haw-tin, an investment director at GAM.

The outlook for the wearable technology space is optimistic. The boundaries for its development and application seem only bound by de-velopers’ imaginations. Yet, as the

sector matures, there’s likely to be more challenges and opportunities.

“Generally I feel we haven’t seen much mergers and acquisitions ac-tivity in the wearables space, which seems surprising because clothes, jewellery and consumer hardware producers and brands should proba-bly be a little more acquisitive to stay in the game,” says Mr von Perger.

There are also signs that the tech-nology is becoming cheaper, with existing wearable solutions being produced at lower cost by Chinese developers, highlighting the need

for greater intellectual property awareness. Others have questioned whether hardware will remain the main focus for the industry, with some expecting the technology to be incorporated into existing products.

“Visible, discrete and specific wearable devices are likely to dis-appear as quickly as they have ap-peared as the data collecting sensors and software are hidden deep within existing watch straps, fashion brace-lets and the like,” GAM’s Mr Hawtin concludes.

However, it is thought that the price of hardware will have to come down before wearable tech clothing really begins to make a mark.

While much of the focus on wearable technology from a retail perspective has been on the physi-cal hardware, more investors are in-terested in the underlying software backing up the devices.

“Since all the wearables are hardware used by end-consum-ers by default, it is much more of a consumer-focused space,” says Wellington’s Mr von Perger. “The

Wearables by volume

MILLIONS CURRENT

Source: ABI Research 2014 Source: TechNavio

What's driving adoption?

2013

2014

2015

2013

2014

2015

2013

2014

2015

2013

2014

2015

32.5

0

1.2

13.5

42.6

2.1

7.4

22.6

2013

2014

2015

6.613.615.8

57.4

10.5

24.9

34.3

K

12%Miniaturisation

L

8%Utility

E

3%Fashion

B

4%Smarter applications

F

3%User behaviour

A

4%Fashion

D

3%Gaming

C

4%Biometrics

C

3%Entertainment

D

4%User experience

B

3%Innovation

E

4%Weight

A

7%Function

F

4%Innovation

K

7%Utility

G

4%Internet connectivity

J

10%Fitness and healthcare

H

31%Cost

I

10%Miniaturisation

I

15%Ease of use

M

8%Efficiency and effectiveness

H

21%Cost

J

12%Need and competition

FUTURE

K

M

A

BA

B

C

C

D

D

E

E

F

J

L

F

G

I

K

G

H

H

J I

28%Ease of use

G

WEARABLE CAMERAS

SMART GLASSES

SMART WATCHES

HEALTHCARE

SPORTS/ACTIVITY TRACKERS


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An alarming number of h i g h - p r o f i l e s e c u r i t y breaches have shown just

how at risk your data is. With weara-bles, however, there’s another, more sensitive dimension.

“A lot of what a device will collect will be sensitive by nature, such as a wristband that measures heart beat,” says Robert Bond, head of data pro-tection at law firm Speechly Bircham.

“With many wearables, nobody tells you how the data is being man-aged. When you upload your data, it’s usually hosted in the cloud – and the cloud isn’t secure.”

As with any technology service, there is usually a trade-off for the user, who is getting something useful, such as insights into their sleep pat-terns, and in return is adding to a vast data bank that is of use to technology providers and others, including in-surers and medical researchers.

Anne Bruinvels, a life scienc-es entrepreneur who has worked on the development of OWise, an app to help breast cancer sufferers manage their illness through a diary

and keeping track of their treatment plan, is very aware of the responsi-bilities placed on developers to look after sensitive data.

“Data privacy is really key,” she says. OWise takes particular care to exclude data that identifies individ-uals from its database. “Our data is not contaminated with patient data – we don’t need to know someone’s name or date of birth,” she says. “We’d rather have slightly less data than compromise their privacy.”

One area of concern for anyone using a device that gathers personal data is how aware the developers are of their requirements under the law. At present, data protection in the European Union is governed by a patchwork of country-specific regulations, but come 2016, a new framework will be in place across all the EU member states that sets out tough requirements on privacy and transparency.

What’s comforting for any EU cit-izen is that, although the developer of the device they’re using might be based in Cupertino, California, as Apple is, the provider is nonethe-less bound by the new rules if the company is handling or processing the data of an EU citizen.

Robert Bond warns that many de-velopers aren’t aware of the require-ments they face when the new data protection framework comes into force. “They are techies who devel-op solutions,” he says. “They are fo-cused on what the tech can do, how quickly they can get it to market and how much money they can make.

Virtual Reality

Page 14

Data Capture

We already share much personal information with big technology providers and, as Kate Bevan reports, wearable devices are also now gathering your data

We’d rather have slightly less data than compromise privacy

Image: Getty

71%FRANCE

69%BRITAIN

62%GERMANY

48%NETHERLANDS

CONSUMER CONCERN ABOUT ONLINE PRIVACY

Source: TRUSTe

PRIVACY AS DEFAULT

“We have got to make developers aware that they should be building in privacy as a default. More se-curity should not be added after it has gone wrong. Quite a number of healthcare companies are being more careful about who they use to develop these apps – they are bring-ing developers in-house.

“Broadly, most of the major medical device manufacturers are increasingly more aware of the security risks.”

Mr Bond’s view is borne out by the chief executive of a medical devices company, who says: “Doctor-patient confidentiality is key. Everything we do is anonymised – we in the compa-ny can’t tell who people are, which is standard in clinical trials.”

But will the developers of the apps and devices in the consumer space adhere to the same high standards? Mr Bond is pessimistic. “We do a lot of venture capital work and we see a lot of private equity being put into startups that are in the business of data,” he says. “Due diligence seems to indicate that there is almost no consideration given to data privacy. Small businesses need to be building privacy into development.”

Under the current regime, you can’t opt out of parts of a developer’s terms and conditions. If you want to use their device, you have to agree to everything, including any data-shar-ing the developer chooses to do. So for example, if your device connects to your health club and shares your data, the health club could be pass-ing on that data to, say, insurers, who will pay to have access to it.

The forthcoming EU data pro-tection framework, however, will give you the right to opt out of such disclosures.

However, there are a number of questions you should ask yourself

when considering whether to use a wearable device that shares your data. The first is to look for how transparent and upfront the docu-mentation is about how the devel-oper gathers, stores and shares your data. “The more sensitive the data, the more you should think, ‘Stop, do I need to reassure myself that I have an understanding about what happens next?’” Mr Bond advises.

Another issue is how portable is the data you’re generating. What happens if you stop using that de-vice or that app? Can you extract your data and use it with a new de-vice or is it within a walled garden?

The best providers are very aware of these concerns and are prepared for the tougher regulatory regime. Ms Bruinvels says: “We are fully com-pliant with the current regulations and we will keep improving that – this happens on a continuous basis.”

There is a great deal of potential benefit in generating and sharing such data. The OWise breast cancer app, for example, makes its data-set available to cancer researchers. But, as Mr Bond concludes: “There’s no such thing as a free lunch. If in doubt, don’t use it.”

WHY YOU NEEDTO CONTROLYOUR DATA


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WEARABLE TECHNOLOGY ONLINE: WWW.RACONTEUR.NET/WEARABLE-TECHNOLOGYP00 RACONTEUR.NET

/COMPANY/RACONTEUR-MEDIA/RACONTEUR.NET@RACONTEUR

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WEARABLE TECHNOLOGY 25/09/14EDITION #0000

Jawbone wants to take the concept of the internet of things and adapt it to each individual’s behaviour.

“These different ‘things’ don’t have relevant context about you – in order for these things to work really well, they need to understand you re-ally well,” says Bandar Antabi, head of special projects.

“Let’s take smart thermostats. The way they work now is they adapt to your behaviour based on how you set them. You put in a certain setting for bed, a certain setting for during the day and over time it starts auto-mating the whole process.

“But ideally you’d want your ther-mostat to know whether you’re ac-tually hot or cold. Not only that, but you’d want it to know if you’re hot because you have a temperature, or because you came in from a run or just woke up, for example. Each of these should trigger a different re-sponse, so you need to give it that sort of intelligence.”

This is where wearables, such as UP by Jawbone and the newest iter-ation UP24, come in. The simple rub-ber wristband comes with a motion sensor and, with this one sensor and the accompanying app, you can mon-itor sleep patterns and steps taken each day.

The sensor is smart enough to be able to tell the difference between the band being moved from side to side and actually being worn on the wrist of someone who’s walking. That sensitivity also allows it to figure out the different stages of your night’s sleep, when you’re in sound sleep and hardly moving, to when you’re tossing and turning in the middle of the night.

In order to be as unobtrusive as possible, Jawbone decided that the UP should be a relatively slim and comfortable wristband, instead of a smartwatch with a screen. The information is fed via Bluetooth to your smartphone since, as Mr Antabi points out, we’re all carrying one of those around anyway. This weara-bility keeps the UP on wrists 24/7,

apart from the short charge cycle of around 80 minutes, which gives up to 14 days’ use.

Using a smartphone as the screen is also smart in another way as it allows Jawbone to add further fea-tures that the user can input extra information into. As well as tracking the number of steps taken during the course of each day, users can add periods of more intense exercise, whether it’s cycling, weight-lifting or Pilates. Users can also keep a food diary, by scanning barcodes, choos-ing from popular chain restaurant menus or just typing the name of the food.

In addition, UP delivers a great social experience to keep you moti-vated by adding team mates in the system to cheer on friends and see how you compare to others. You can connect with the apps and servic-es you love, such as MyFitnessPal, RunKeeper or IFTTT, and discover new ones.

These additional features bump up the other side of the internet of things equation – the data. With data on sleeping, eating and exercise hab-its of large sets of people, Jawbone can extract trends and use the infor-mation to help inform and motivate its users to better life habits.

“We’re unique in the fact that we actually have a team of data sci-entists looking at the macro-level data,” says Mr Antabi. “When we were analysing trends, we realised that our female UPsters, when they go to bed before their bedtime av-erage, end up burning more calories and being more active the next day.

“So let’s say Sarah is using her UP. It can notify her that after 50 days of use, we realised when she goes to bed even half an hour past her average bedtime, she’s losing an average of a hundred steps the next day. That’s very insightful infor-mation that she would have no way of knowing had we not been able to correlate these different datasets.”

The data has also helped lead to group challenges, which UP allows

Commercial Feature

‘Internet of you’from Jawbone…The internet of things is not enough for Jawbone – the consumer technology and wearables company wants to create the “internet of you” by building hardware and software platforms powered by data science

users to opt in and out of. For ex-ample, for the US holiday of Thanks-giving, Jawbone realised that, for obvious reasons, people were eating and sitting around more. The com-pany challenged users through UP to meet their usual number of steps tracked. The 25 per cent of users that opted in ended up doing 1,500

steps more than those who didn’t, which Mr Antabi attributes to the mo-tivational power of the data behind the challenges and living up to the challenge itself.

The company takes data privacy seriously. It is committed to erasing all the personal data of anyone who asks and demands the same com-mitment of partners, such as Nest, the learning thermostat company, fit-ness tracker RunKeeper and Whistle, a dog-monitoring device. And while it may seem like being told how to live your life by a wristband and an app could be invasive, the numbers show that people are happy to have help.

According to Thread Analytics, communications, weather and news apps are used most frequently and retain a lot of people over 90 days. But none of them keep more than 55 per cent of their users. UP is see-ing 81 per cent retention and users open their app 20 times a week.

“When it comes to your wellness

and health, ignorance isn’t really bliss - the more you know the bet-ter. I understand that people could think it could be invasive, but if you give them the controls to dictate how they use it, they’ll be happy with the functionality,” Mr Antabi concludes.

Available at www.currys.co.uk www.pcworld.co.uk www.dixonstravel.co.uk RRP £124.99When it comes to

your wellness and health, ignorance

isn’t really bliss - the more you know the better

Commercial Feature


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There are so many possible

uses of the technology – it is a huge – there really is no end to it

Interview

Jaron Lanier is a visionary in every sense of the word. He coined the term “virtu-

al reality” in the 1980s, pioneered head-mounted wearable displays and went on to apply the technolo-gy to cutting-edge medical imaging.

He is also a respected author and social commentator, who has provided a comprehensive critique of what current digital economic models could mean for the future.

Now the virtual reality (VR) tech-nology he spearheaded three dec-ades ago is about to finally hit the market, with the release of products such as the Facebook-backed Oculus Rift and Sony’s Project Morpheus for PlayStation 4.

But virtual reality has implica-tions far beyond the gaming in-dustry, he says. At its best it can “augment” what a person sees, and enhance their understanding and appreciation of the world by creat-ing a “mixed reality” via wearable displays.

Back in the eighties, he wrote that the technology would allow people to walk around and see the world with extra content in it. “A lot of the focus was about doing less harm to the physical world so, instead of expending resources, you could do things virtually,” he says.

Over the last 30 years, he has test-ed numerous versions of VR wear-able displays. “Everything people

can see today existed in prototypes decades ago. And I mean that with-out exaggeration. There were things that looked just like Google Glass and Oculus Rift. It’s just that it was very expensive.”

VISIONS OF THE FUTURE

Mr Lanier originally predicted wearable VR displays would be-come viable as a consumer product in 2020, using calculations based on Moore’s Law – the rule that comput-er processing speeds double every 18 months.

“There are two things going on. Hardware gets better and cheaper, and software gets worse. So hard-ware is the wind in your sales and software is the drag,” he says.

Technology such as Google Glass, which displays hands-free smart-phone information, is relatively straightforward as it is not so de-pendent on software advances.

“But if you want to do something that includes virtual reality and aug-mented worlds, that is quite difficult to do well. Even a lot of people in the field today haven’t fully understood how hard some of it is to do. So if you count the software being good, I think 2020 might not be so far off,” he says.

He believes there are numerous compelling uses for VR.

“A lot of the applications in edu-cation fascinate me. My favourite

one is where you could walk through a city and grab a virtual dial and turn back history so you can see what it would have been like in different historical periods. If done well it could be incredibly provocative and give you a much more grounded feeling for history.”

Features such as simulated X-ray vision could allow wearers to see through the surface of structures and living things to display their in-ternal mechanisms.

VR applications could also display mathematical equations and calcu-lations attached to everyday objects in real time. “So, for example, if you were at a ball game and were able to watch the equations of motion as they apply to the ball in real time – it could be amazing for kids.

“Some of this really goes be-yond being a gimmick and has real profundity.”

More mundane uses include the ability to see your interior decorat-ing virtually before it has been done. And as Mr Lanier is keen to stress: “There are so many possible uses of the technology – it is a huge – there really is no end to it.”

INDUSTRY ADOPTION

The sophistication of software re-quired is still a long way off, though. “It could still be a generation or two of people – not devices – until some of those things are really good. The potential is so great people might very well be motivated to expend that effort,” he says.

But when it comes to applications in industry, the technology is not only mature “but kind of boring” because they have been around for decades already, he adds.

The airline industry was one of the biggest early funders of augmented or mixed reality, and uses the tech-nology for training simulations.

Mr Lanier has also helped devel-op its usage in medical applications, such as real-time support for sur-geons. For example, superimposing medical imagery from an endoscope directly on to the patient’s body so the surgeon can get a better sense of what is going on. “That is a very established technology and one of the first to work well,” he says.

Virtual technology prototypes have been developed to allow facto-

VIRTUAL SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME Groundbreaking virtual reality pioneer Jaron Lanier looks into

the future and tells Kathleen Hall that uses of the technology are endless, but the privacy stakes are high

Image: Getty

Image: Rex Features

Above 1990 original virtual

reality goggles Left Jaron Lanier

Above Latest Oculus Rift HD virtual reality head-mounted displays, January 2014


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Interview

ry workers to understand how to put together complicated devices. He believes three-dimensional exploded disassembly processes and test pro-cedures could be particularly bene-ficial to field engineers who have to repair complicated devices on-site.

“That has been implemented in some cases, but it has been well pro-totyped for some time. I expect that to be important and I think it will be important for emergency services,” says Mr Lanier.

More prosaic uses of the technol-ogy could include facilities manage-ment of large warehouses or ship-yards, where there are vast numbers of stored items, which could be more easily located using mixed reality in-dicators rather than having to refer to a record on a computer.

LESS IS MORE

However, Mr Lanier cautions against an over-reliance on this technology. “The problem is that software is often a little buggy and it is hard to get it just right. In the same breath as you talk about how useful it is, you have to add the qualifier – providing people use it with perspec-tive, intelligence and balance.”

Temperate usage of the technolo-gy for consumers will also yield the best sensory experience, he says.

“I remember we used to keep a lot of flowers around, so when you had experienced the virtual world for

an hour and then looked at a flower after coming out, it had this subtlety you’d never seen before. It can really wake up your senses.”

But there are more sober reasons for judicious usage of the technolo-gy, given the current debate around online privacy.

“One of the [digital] trends is an economic model where people pri-oritise low cost or no cost and con-venience over anything else. And so they are willing to give up their pri-vacy and their information to third parties without understanding the implications, just to get something free or cheap,” he says.

“The problem with that model in connection to wearables in general, and virtual reality and mixed reali-ty in particular, is that these devic-es gather data from you at a much more intimate level.

“So it’s not just what you do through a keyboard or a touch screen, it’s your heart rate, where you are looking, where you are sleeping, your metabolism. It is all kinds of things about you.”

Access to this type of information means there is even greater poten-tial to manipulate individuals. As such Mr Lanier says he no longer views wearable applications that monitor and generate feedback about peoples’ bodies – and help them make healthier choices – as necessarily beneficial.

He says: “These days it has this creepy quality to it. Yes, it means you are getting all this feedback, but who else is? Is some remote intelligence service getting this feedback or some criminal organisation hacking into some service and getting it?”

But that doesn’t mean people shouldn’t use these types of appli-cations; they should just take an in-formed view. “If somebody does want to get some health feedback device, they should think very hard about the company and they should think hard about their situation,” he says.

Neither is Mr Lanier a pessimist about future usage of virtual reality wearable displays. “If they are done well, they are like a fine wine, which is enjoyed best in moderation,” he says. “I think it will be both wide-spread and cherished, but at the same time should be used sparingly, which in my judgment would be the best outcome.”

Image: Getty

Must-have Technology

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From emotion-sensitive couture to customisable smart timepieces, a newly style-centric approach to wearable technology could yet prove its making, as Henry Farrar-Hockley reports

FASHION BYTESIf the continuing miniatur-

isation of phones, cameras and computers is an inevi-

tability, so too is the convergence of fashion and technology. At their best, both forms are intrinsically person-al, outward-facing expressions of choice, attitude and status rooted in an absolute purpose. Furthermore, excepting human augmentation, we simply can’t get any closer to our gadgets than by physically in-tegrating them into our day-to-day garments. In this regard wearable technology makes perfect sense.

New York research firm CB In-sights estimates that investors have injected more than $1.4 billion into wearables startups over the past five years, with Cowen investment bank forecasting that the wearables cate-gory as a whole could attain a mar-ket value of $170 billion by 2020.

Yet the much vaunted new wave of wearable tech has yet to make as sig-nificant an impact as the touchscreen portables that became so ubiquitous after the late Steve Jobs of Apple prom-ised “the internet in your pocket”.

While 70 per cent of consum-ers are already aware of weara-bles, only one in six currently use wearable technology, according to international consumer research

company Nielsen’s latest Connected Life Report, while a study published earlier this month by L2Think Tank and Intel says only 2 per cent of us actually own a wearable device.

Is a lack of considered aesthetics really to blame for this shortfall? Perhaps. Nielsen’s report claims 62 per cent of those canvassed said they’d like to see wearables available in forms other than wristbands and watches, while 53 per cent preferred the idea of wearable devices that re-semble jewellery.

NO STONE UNTURNED

Recent advances in connected technology are setting the tone for a more engaging raft of tech-enabled fashion accessories that promise a re-warding balance of form and function.

Kovert Designs is a British startup set to retail a new collection of smart jewellery seasonally from 2015. Each pendant, ring and bracelet features a modular design that allows a small degree of customisation, while the accompanying app allows you to set your chosen piece to vibrate solely when you receive communications from a pre-determined group of con-tacts, thus ensuring you’re only dis-turbed by priority e-mails or messag-es. It’s not just an item of jewellery

then, but a digital filter that could go some way to liberating us from our portable screens.

“From an overall perspective it’s about… resetting the balance be-tween our physical and digital lives,” says Kovert Design’s chief executive Kate Unsworth. “From a high-fash-ion perspective, we’re looking forward to living in a world where technology is more discreet. We want it to be like oxygen. Of course it’s hugely important and ever pres-ent, but it should be invisible too.”

The company is just one of many new facets entering the smart jew-ellery sector along with the likes of Ringly, Misfit and Q Designs. To-gether they promise a multitude of connected services from biometric data capture to charging phones and tablets on the move, and exhibit a design language that’s more readily compatible with our clothing than conventional sports fitness bands.

When the long-awaited Apple Watch was announced this month, it represented a sea change for the Cu-pertino company. Over the past year, Apple chief executive Tim Cook has been raiding the fashion industry for some of its biggest influencers, employing Burberry chief executive Angela Ahrendts, Yves Saint Laurent chief Paul Deneve and Nike design director Ben Shaffer, along with product designer Marc Newson.

The result of these acquisitions has been an unusual new design model for the Apple Watch, allowing

The Life Tech jacket has a removable shoulder-mounted wind turbine for charging electronic devices

Fashion


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its customers the luxury of choice for the very first time, with a com-prehensive range of sizes, finishes and materials from a basic stainless steel and silicon timepiece through to a lavish 18-karat rose-gold model with a matching clasp. Consumers will have to wait until early-2015 to see exactly how much this vision will cost, although a ballpark start-ing price of $349 has been set.

MATERIAL GAINS

The wearable textiles category has seen a much more gradual gen-esis thanks to the inherent difficul-ties of marrying circuit boards and power supplies with lightweight fabrics, but with the introduction of more adaptable fuel sources, re-tail-ready fashion is slowly begin-ning to materialise.

San Francisco-based designer Kristin Neidlinger is the inventor of the Sensoree GER Mood Sweat-er, a futuristic roll-neck that’s available for pre-order. Using four hand-mounted sensors that record galvanic skin response it is able to gauge your emotions before display-ing them as one of five bold colours using LEDs embedded in the collar.

In the performance apparel sector, meanwhile, a collaboration between Britain’s Seymourpowell and Korean active-wear brand Kolon Sport has created the Life Tech jacket, which features the world’s first conductive polymer heating system that pro-vides seven hours of 40 to 50-degree

insulation. It also has a removable shoulder-mounted wind turbine for charging electronic devices.

“The Life Tech jacket is pioneer-ing in its relevant and effective use of wearables,” says Seymourpowell associate design director Ian What-ley. “[It] uses the latest technology to meet the most essential of human needs, such as shelter, warmth and communication, in ways that conven-tional garments simply can’t achieve.”

Yet the most promising break-through in the confluence of weara-ble technology and fashion occurred at the outset of this year’s US Open Tennis Championships, where tour-nament outfitter Ralph Lauren an-nounced the creation of its inaugural Polo Tech shirt.

A form-fitting athletic top de-veloped in conjunction with Mon-treal-based OMsignal, it contains conductive silver-coated fibres woven into its antimicrobial, mois-ture-wicking material that accurate-ly measure everything from heart beat to respiration, stress levels and the wearer’s energy output, re-laying the metrics via Bluetooth to a synced smartphone. It is intend-ed as the first in a line of technolo-gy-enhanced athletic and workaday dress shirts to be rolled out by the global fashion brand over the next year. Unfashionable wearables may just have been aced.

Fashion Commercial Feature

Image: Getty

Google co-founder Sergey Brin (left),

and designers Diane Von Furstenberg and

Yvan Mispelaere, wearing Google Glass at a DvF

fashion show in New York


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FIGHTING FRAUD24/09/14EDITION #0000 P3

to avoid injuries. The ViSafe system has been success-fully used by large and small compa-nies, in sectors f rom retai l to mining, to iden-tify risk in the workplace, re-duce injury and related costs, and improve productivity through bet-ter work practices.

“ViSafe gives a clear picture of how employees are moving during a task – how long they spend bending, leaning, in good postures, bad pos-tures, sitting at their desk and walk-ing around. This data can be used to pinpoint those tasks that are creating high risks of injury,” adds Mr Ronchi.

The technology can also be pro-grammed to alert wearers when they have been in a poor position for too long so they can move into a better posture. This “biofeedback” is a way to help people self-manage their way out of back pain.

The same technology is used by elite athletes, including Premier League football teams, where the ability to screen individual players’ movement leads to better preven-

tion of injury, targeted and meas-urable rehabilitation, and improved decisions about returning to play.

At home, at work, at play, each person’s movement is unique and important. Now we have the tool that can measure it.

For more information about how dorsaVi technology could help your patients, athletes or your employees, contact Zoe Whyatt on 0203 7355300 or e-mail [email protected]

www.dorsavi.com

Getting to the root of back pain can be a frustrating, painful and often long journey for both patient and clinician, but revolutionary tech-nology is putting precise meas-urement of movement at the heart of the solution.

A smart device, powered by wearable sensors, is providing new and important insights to the causes of back pain, which affects four out of fi ve people at some point in their lives.

“An enduring problem of treating back pain is the in-ability to know what is going on once the patient leaves the surgery,” says Andrew Ronchi, physiotherapist and dorsaVi chief executive.

Patients struggling with chron-ic back pain wear ViMove sensors for just 24 hours, and the resulting biomechanical information helps clinicians map the complex land-scape of muscle activity and spinal movement. This gives the clinicians an unrivalled view into the patient’s world. The ability to identify move-ment patterns and dysfunctions that may be causing back pain creates an opportunity to design highly tailored treatment plans that improve quality of life and outcomes for patients.

Back pain, which costs the UK more than £2 billion a year in terms of NHS bills and absenteeism, is the prime cause of long-term sickness in manual jobs and the number-two rea-son for long-term sickness.

To tackle the problem, smart em-ployers are using this technology, in the form of ViSafe, to assess man-ual tasks and adjust work practices

A smart device, powered by

wearable sensors, is providing new and important insights to the causes of back pain

Commercial Feature

Wearing away back painThe smart device that gets to the root of the problem…


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Emerging Sectors

The cheery childhoods of Swallows and Amazons and Cider with Rosie, where stout-hearted eight year olds got lost in the wilderness for days on end, seems like another epoch. Today we live in the era of the cyber child. Even as the little one sleeps, the parent will know what their heart rate is and even their estimated time of waking.The Sproutling baby monitor is an ankle bracelet which monitors 16 different things, to give parents a con-stant read-out of their infant’s state of health. There’s a heart-rate monitor, a skin-temperature gauge and it can measure the position of the baby. A base station will monitor ambient

noise, so if the neighbours start play-ing music at 4am parents are notified of the danger of the baby being woken, plus humidity and light detectors. The key is usability as Sproutling uses push notifications to a smartphone when parameters are breached. The neatest bit? An algorithm which uses all the data to work out when the child will wake up. At $299 it’s targeted at tech-obsessed millennials.The competition is fierce. The Owlet Smart Sock measures oxygen levels in the blood, skin temperature and move-ment. As the name says, it’s a sock and, like Sproutling, is app-connected. The Mimo is full clothing fitted with baby sensors. For cheapskates, a Nivea

Tracking Bracelet sets off an alert when the child moves a distance away.For older kids there’s the potential to improve habits through technology. Fitbit founder Paul Landau predicts: “In a childcare setting, wearable tech-nology has the ability to make activity fun through gamification, where kids can compete in games and challenges by taking a certain amount of exercise. For many years, Fitbug has run leagues called Fantasy Footfall and virtual challenges whereby teams compete to complete a virtual walk from Land’s End to John O’Groats.”Frankly, the only thing we haven’t seen is something to make nappies obsolete. Shame.

The front line of the debate on privacy is the insurance industry. The battle is between insurers, who want to know as much about their customers as possible, and consumers who’d rather keep spy-kit far, far away. The insurers carry a big carrot in the form of lower prices for people who play ball.Car insurers have got as far as using GPS trackers and telemat-ics. Insurethebox.com will knock a sizeable amount off your car policy for installing a black box. But wearable technology? Although there is no sig-nificant collaboration yet, the industry is examining the potential.Nigel Walsh, head of insurance at

Capgemini, says of wearable tech: “This is one of the most exciting opportunities that melds together the ongoing consumerisation of IT to our increasing thirst for data. Real-time data will give us the ability to drive change in behaviours before the event rather than afterwards.” Just as car telematics encourage drivers to slow down, preventing a crash, cholesterol and heart-rate monitors will encourage healthy living, lowering premiums.Digital anthropologist Nik Poll-inger has his doubts. “Before the insurance industry gets too excited about the potential of wearables and the internet of things, there are

three crucial issues to consider,” he points out. “Firstly, we can question whether wearables and their tracking functions will become desirable from an aesthetic or practical point of view. Secondly, the industry needs to find ways to access available sensor data and thirdly, if it does, it may find that too much exposure to our personal data may be as useless as too little.”The final point is vital. Since medical opinion is divided on whether beef fat is good or bad for you or whether moderate alcohol lowers or extends life, the insurance industry can’t correlate these metrics to insurance premiums. It may be a while before the insurers embrace wearable tech.

The US military budget is $756 billion for 2015, £46 billion in the UK. This cash mountain is why the military is so far ahead of every other field in wearable technology. So what’s next?An immersive medical virtual reality app by Plextek Consulting turns the Oculus Rift visor into a battlefield surgical theatre. The simulator places soldiers in a medical emergency, such as an improvised explosive device wounding multiple colleagues. The app is designed to replicate moulage training in which soldiers interact with actors with painted wounds to accustom them to the real thing. Funding is from the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, a government military research body.

London-based TrueLife Optics is the creator of a holographic “head-up dis-play”. A 2mm-thin sliver of glass is used to project high definition, full-colour, 3D imagery through the line of sight. The National Physical Laboratory in Tedding-ton worked in partnership on the project, which allows advisory information to be overlaid on to real-world objects and peo-ple, just as a fighter-jet head-up display does. The device is already available for £300.A key area is power generation. Soldiers can’t just plug in their gizmos. One solution is to create solar panel clothing. Dr Emmanuel Tsekleves, of Lancaster University, co-pioneered the develop-ment of photovoltaic clothing capable of

producing significant wattage. The Min-istry of Defence-sponsored project is now complete. And how about invisibility cloaks? Harry Potter has one, now Professor Andrea Alu, of the University of Texas, at Austin, has designed an ultra-thin electronic wrapping which scatters light around a subject. Professor Alu reported light-scattering for certain colours might be feasible, but warned full invisibility was currently “impossible”. Camera-based cloaks, which project on one side what they see on the other, are much easier to create. With so much money waiting for any technology which can give soldiers an edge, if a prototype can be made, you can bet it will be.

From sleep-forecasters on babies to invisibility cloaks for battlefield warriors, Charles Orton-Jones has the technologies changing three big-money industries

CHILDCARE

INSURANCE

DEFENCE

TURNING GADGETS INTO MUST-HAVES

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