The iWatch May Include Biosensors
There have been many rumors about Apple’s desire to be an important player in the wearable computers market and in order to achieve this goal, the company needs to increase the size of its staff. As you know, Apple has been working for quite some time on its own smartwatch, dubbed the iWatch. Many rumors point to an unveiling this year. However, Apple has been hiring engineers in all kinds of fields, not only general fitness and wearable computers. Among the scientists the Cupertino based company has hired, there are many that work in medical related fields.
Increasing iWatch’s Staff
At the end of 2013 Apple made efforts to increase its team of engineers, by hiring some specialists that have experience with medical sensors. There are two particular specialists that Apple has hired. The first is Ravi Narasimhan from Vital Connect and the second specialist is Nancy Dougherty from Sano Intelligence. Vital Connect is a company at the intersection of healthcare and technology, creating wearable sensors and Ravi Narasimhan was the vice president of the company’s R&D division, while Sano Intelligence is a company “building a revolutionary health monitoring product that will reveal new insights about stage zero care” and Nancy Dougherty was the head of hardware development.
Unobtrusive blood reading
We mentioned that Sano Intelligence works in the field of bio sensors and it is “building a revolutionary health monitoring product that will reveal new insights about stage zero care“. The company did not reveal what the product is. However, following the company’s , you can find more information about Sano Intelligence’s product: a cheap patch that will analyze your blood (without being intrusive) and can send the results to any compatible device for monitoring. This is what Fast Company had to say about Sano Intelligence’s upcoming product:
The needle-less, sensor-laden transdermal patch is painless (I handled a prototype, which felt like sandpaper on the skin) and will soon be able to monitor everything you might find on a basic metabolic panel–a blood panel that measures glucose levels, kidney function, and electrolyte balance. Already, Sano’s prototype can measure glucose and potassium levels. There are enough probes on the wireless, battery-powered chip to continuously test up to a hundred different samples, and 30% to 40% of today’s blood diagnostics are compatible with the device. It’s cheap, too, with a materials cost of just $1 or $2 per sensor (each sensor has a seven day lifespan) thanks to an efficient manufacturing process that’s similar to what’s currently used to make semiconductor chips. The device isn’t waterproof yet, but Sano is working on it.
The work that Nancy Daugherty did as the head of hardware development at Sano Intelligence could be a hint of what to expect from Apple’s much rumored smartwatch. If indeed Apple will include a function similar to that of Sano Intelligence’s patch in its upcoming smartwatch, it will have a major advantage of other smartwatches on the market. The applications for such a function could be endless… it could help diabetics monitor their sugar levels and it could even take health tracking to a whole new level. Who knows, it may even make the medical sensor market segment grow exponentially. And we are also certain that the non intrusive way that Sano Intelligence’s product uses to monitor a person’s blood will be welcomed for a device that users wear on their wrists. Not to mention it is easier to get such a device the market than more intrusive medical devices.
mentions:
Hardware Lead
Sano Intelligence
November 2012 – December 2013 (1 year 2 months) San Francisco Bay Area
• Hardware Lead in a very early stage company designing a novel wearable sensor system. Brought system from conception through development and board spins to a functioning wearable pilot device.
• Solely responsible for electrical design, testing, and bring-up as well as system integration; managing contractors for layout, assembly, and mechanical systems
• Building laboratory data collection systems and other required electrical and mechanical systems to support chemical development
Her CV is amazing, at least if you consider that the hardware was mainly her creation, so it’s no wonder that Apple hired her and we are sure this means the iWatch is going to be amazing; we are already expecting innovative feature and we also think that, at the very least, Apple’s smartwatch will be more successful than the Samsung Galaxy Gear, even though innovation isn’t always synonym with commercial success.
Before being the hardware lead of development at Sano Intelligence, Nancy Dougherty worked at Proteus Digital Health, and she was responsible for the hardware design and implementation of a medical device that monitors heart rate, respiration, motion, and temperature. This is all in her LinkedIn profile:
Senior Electrical Engineer, Device Systems
Proteus Digital Health, Inc
October 2010 – November 2012 (2 years 2 months) Redwood City, CA
• Development of an FDA regulated Class II medical device; a Bluetooth-enabled electronic “Band-Aid” that monitors heart rate, respiration, motion, and temperature, as well as detects technologically enabled “Smart Pills” that are ingested and activated in the stomach
• Brought hardware design through 2 product cycles, controlled the schematic in the second generation
• Responsible for hardware design, firmware support, failure analysis, and system troubleshooting. Managed all power budgets, and created hardware, firmware, and software for test systems.
• Studied psychology, behavior design, and interface design, and created and implemented experiments based on this research; presented this research at several conferences.
The other specialist that Apple hired is Ravi Narasimhan. We mentioned that Vital Connect is a company that makes wearable sensors and Ravi Narasimhan was the vice president of the research and development department. Just like Nancy Dougherty, he also worked on wearable medical devices. Vital Connect’s device also monitors a lot of parameters. All these parameters could be useful for 24 / 7 health tracking by way of a smartwatch. At Apple, Ravi Narasimhan will work as a research and development specialist, the same position he occupied at Vital Connect, only there he was Vice President of the Research and Development division. This is from :
Vice President of R&D, Biosensor Technology
Vital Connect, Inc.
September 2011 – December 2013 (2 years 4 months) San Francisco Bay Area
Responsible for biosensor technology and algorithms for remote physiological monitoring with wearable medical devices.
Sensor processing includes ECG, respiration, human fall detection, posture and activity.
Developed clinical trial protocols and worked with research institutions to secure IRB approval. Experience in conducting clinical trials.
15 patents filed and 4 publications on biomedical algorithms.
His CV is also amazing and his experience in the field of biosensors will definitely be useful for the development of Apple’s first smartwatch. Before being the vice president of the research and development division at Vital Connect, Ravi Narasimhan worked at various companies, in various positions, from technical director to chief scientist. His last job before Vital Connect was at AppliedMicro and he was the chief scientist, among other things building signal processing architecture for LTE base station. This is all in his LinkedIn profile:
Chief Scientist
AMCC
October 2009 – September 2011 (2 years)
Initiated baseband project for 3GPP LTE base station.
Built multi-national team of systems and DSP engineers.
Developed signal processing architecture for LTE base station.
Patent pending on various aspects of LTE.Technical Director
Quantenna
June 2008 – October 2009 (1 year 5 months)
Technical leadership in strategy and development of next-generation WiFi (802.11n) chipset.
Close interaction with RF, ASIC and software teams in product design, development and testing.
Developed algorithms for transmit beamforming, interference cancellation, radar detection.
Analysis of rate vs reliability and range with and without beamforming.
He is also an inventor, applying over fifty patents throughout his entire career. Some of these patents are related to various aspects of LTE tech, but there are many of them related to biomedical algorithms and he may put them to work for Apple’s iWatch. Of course there is no guarantee that any of the products mentioned above, related to Ravi Narasimhan and Nancy Dougherty’s previous jobs are going to make their way inside Apple’s upcoming smartwatch, the iWatch. The iWatch may or may not include biosensors for monitoring certain things, such as respiratory rate (such a device was patented by Ravi Narasimhan for example) or the human blood (related to Nancy Dougherty’s previous work at Sano Intelligence). But one thing is certain: the iWatch team is growing and there are quality scientist working on it, which guarantees a good product, at least from a tech point of view.
It seems that wearable medical devices that monitor health parameters are all the rage this year, as rumors also point to many other companies investing a lot of money into biosensors. Companies from Silicon Valley are also trying to get specialists in this field for their unknown projects. Apple does not have much to worry though, as even though companies like the aforementioned Sano Intelligence and Vital Connect to work and release medical wearable devices, such as blood monitoring patches or biosensors, they are aiming for different markets and will not be in direct competition to Apple’s upcoming iWatch.
It’s A Brave New World
Yes it is, at least when it comes to biosensors. The future is going to be very interesting, what with all the biosensors that are soon going to be incorporated in devices we use all the time, such as a (smart) watch. Wearable medical devices can measure anything from your respiratory rate, to your blood, to your heart rate, motion, you name it and they could be used in countless ways, for many purposes. As more time is spent researching and developing these biosensors, they will become more reliable and more common. Apple is just one of the big names in the mobile industry searching to integrate biosensors into its devices. As you all know, the Cupertino based giant released the iPhone 5S last year, which includes Touch ID, a fingerprint sensor under the smartphone’s Home button. In the near future, Apple (or another company) could release a mobile device with a fingerprint sensor embedded in the device’s display. That would surely be interesting and there will be many uses for it.
Fingerprint sensors and biosensors that monitor your blood or heart rate or motion are not the only innovative technologies that made (in the case of the fingerprint sensor) and could (in the case of the different biosensors in the research and development phase) make their way into mobile devices. Some rumors hint at iris scanners being researched by engineers at a few companies, Apple and Samsung (the two being rival corporations in the mobile industry) being one of them. Iris scanning technology, if integrated in a mobile device, can be used for the same purposes the fingerprint scanner is used for: unlocking your device or making online transactions. It remains to be seen if iris scanning technology could be tricked using a picture of someone’s eye.
Another field that has been progressing in at a very impressive pace is facial recognition. The tandem of modern server farms, capable to analyze the most complex scenes very quickly and cloud power, which means they could received the image (with a person’s face) to be analyzed, do their magic and then send the results in less than a few seconds. A few years ago, this scenario would have been fit for a science fiction book or movie, but today it is very real and possible. In the near future security in the mobile world, could be based on facial recognition software. However, don’t expect iris scanning and facial recognition just yet. While the iWatch could include some kind of biosensor, it will most likely not include the above mentioned technologies (iris scanning and facial recognition). We’re not even sure about the next generation of smartphone, though they do have a better chance than the iWatch of including these technologies.
What’s Next For Apple?
The near future, that is the second half of 2014, will most likely bring the release of a new hardware product from Apple. Tim Cook, the company’s CEO, hinted that Apple would release a new line of iDevices this year. In a speech to his employees, Tim Cook said “We have a lot to look forward to in 2014, including some big plans that we think customers are going to love,”; this was last year, in December and many industry analysts believe Apple’s CEO was talking about the long rumored smartwatch from Apple, the iWatch. If it was indeed the iWatch what Tim Cook mentioned in his speech or another long rumored Apple device (the iPhone 6) we won’t know until Apple makes an official announcement, probably later this year, in the fourth quarter.
If last year the Cupertino based corporation was happy to release iterative upgrades to its devices and to its mobile Operating System, iOS, this year everyone believes that Apple will finally announce new hardware. However, one thing is certain: the iWatch will be released and as we mention throughout this article, it could include biosensors to monitor the user’s heart rate or blood. At least that’s what the latest specialists hired by Apple seem to suggest if we extrapolate based on their previous work experience. What do you think, will Apple release its wearable device with medical biosensors integrated in it? And are you going to buy one when (because it is just a matter of time) the iWatch is going to be released? Leave us a comment in the dedicated section below.
