Samsung Beats Apple to the Punch with Their New Health Monitor
Samsung has officially beat Apple to launching a health tracking system. While Apple is set to launch HealthBook at next week's conference, Samsung announced their new Simband yesterday.
.Samsung has officially beat Apple to launching a health tracking system. While Apple is set to launch HealthBook at next week's developer's conference, Samsung announced their new Simband yesterday. Simband will aim to monitor all of your bodily functions: blood flow, hydration level, skin temperature, and everything in between.
Simband is a simple black band with a rectangular watch face. It runs open platform software, as Samsung will encourage other developers to create content for it. Samsung's chief strategy officer Young Sohn said this open platform is key: it means "the best brains can work on it" because health tracking "is bigger than any one company can solve."
The band can have different pieces attached and detached. Samsung is already creating pieces to track oxygen content in the the wearer's blood. The battery is also swappable, so one battery can always be charging, while the monitor stays on your wrist. As for the accuracy of the sensors, Samsung is working with the digital health innovation lab at the University of California San Francisco to best determine how accurate the sensors can be.
"This is the single greatest opportunity of our generation, to better understand our physical being, to give a voice to what is happening in our bodies," said Sohn.
Unfortunately, it won't be hitting the market anytime soon. Samsung is calling this an "investigational device."