Biometric wearables like Whoop bracelets, Oura rings, BioStrap and BioStickers, are all showing promise for health and fitness monitoring. These wearables can track heart rate, sleep, detect transmissible diseases early, track cancer patient recovery, and more.
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The Duxbury Fire Department became the first fire department in the country to offer biometric rings to all of its firefighters and staff. Firefighters will sport Oura biometric rings, which will track their vital signs, including pulse, temperature, and sleep cycles, in order to indicate when they are run down or susceptible to illness.
“I wanted to give the men and women another tool to keep them healthy,” said Duxbury Fire Chief Kevin Nord.
The Oura rings can track the wearer’s temperature, which means that they will be able to tell whether or not a firefighter has a fever and could be infected with COVID-19. However, the rings also measure other vital signs like pulse and sleep cycles, giving them ongoing utility as a general health tracker once the coronavirus has passed.
WHOOP and CrossFit announced a multi-year partnership naming WHOOP the Official Wearable of CrossFit. The partnership will help CrossFit athletes at all levels benefit from WHOOP data around training, sleep, and recovery. CrossFit also plans to share data from the world’s fittest athletes via integrations into its broadcast programming and other digital and on-site channels.
“CrossFit athletes were some of the earliest WHOOP adopters and have continued to be an integral part of our growing global membership,” said Will Ahmed, WHOOP Founder and CEO. “WHOOP is the ideal partner for CrossFit training as it provides the information that athletes and fitness enthusiasts alike need to understand their bodies, prioritize recovery, and ultimately optimize performance. We are incredibly excited to become an official partner of CrossFit and bring our communities even closer together.”
BioIntelliSense, Inc., a continuous health monitoring and clinical intelligence company has entered into a strategic partnership with The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) to incorporate the use of the BioSticker™ medical wearable device and data services in clinical trials of hematological cancer patients.
The BioSticker is the first FDA-cleared single-use medical device that enables 30 days of continuous vital signs monitoring. The BioIntelliSense medical-grade Data-as-a-Service (DaaS) platform and FDA 510(k) Class II medical wearable device provide a new standard for Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM), by combining an effortless patient experience with medical-grade clinical accuracy, for cost-effective virtual trials, the company said.
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BioStrap CEO Sameer Sontakey was alerted by his BioStrap wearable that he may have COVID-19, prompting him to schedule a test, which confirmed the early diagnosis.
People with even asymptomatic COVID-19 show significant biometric changes, including their resting heart rate, heart rate variability, oxygen saturation, respiration rate and arterial properties. A risk assessment system developed by BioStrap with a modified Early Warning Score (EWS) can detect potential respiratory infections based on these signals, the company says. The biometric monitoring showed Sontakey’s sleep quality declined, with disruptions and their durations increasing, and his heart rate variability plummeted. After recovery, the BioStrap-EWS detected his return to normal values and reclassified him as low-risk. The same pattern was also noted in other users who tested positive for COVID-19 during the company’s internal testing in 2020, reports Biometric Update.
