Free Republic

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will soon start a massive advertising blitz to encourage uptake of wearables such as fitness trackers among Americans, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said on June 24. “We’re about to launch one of the biggest advertising campaigns in HHS history to encourage Americans to use wearables,” Kennedy said on Capitol Hill in Washington during a congressional hearing. Rep. Troy Balderson (R-Ohio) spoke positively about what he described as innovative wellness tools and asked Kennedy to describe how the government is promoting access to such tools.

Two small human challenge studies explore the possibility in the era of COVID-19by , Staff Writer, A non-invasive biometric sensor screening device accurately identified flu and the common cold prior to symptom onset, researchers found in two small human challenge studies. In the first, which involved 31 participants inoculated with influenza, Empatica's E4 wristband detected the difference between infection and non-infection with up to 92% accuracy. The second involved 18 participants inoculated with human rhinovirus, and here the E4 wristband detected the difference between infection and non-infection with 88% accuracy, reported Jessilyn Dunn, PhD, of Duke University in Durham, North...

Estimote, Inc. has created a set of devices and software that’ll allow a business owner to keep track of their workers remotely. With a “contact tracing dashboard” and Bluetooth devices (worn by each employee), a business owner can keep track of the location and relative health of their workforce. Each wearable device scans for other wearable devices in the area and “registers close interactions.” ...the Estimote system, “in the event of a symptomatic employee, companies can quickly locate other exposed team members who are at risk.” Tracking is done with indoor GPS, working with Bluetooth beacons that the employer has...

A startup focused on “invisible computing” Thursday unveiled a smart contact lens which delivers an augmented reality display in a user’s field of vision. The Mojo Vision contact lens offers a display with information and notifications, and allows the user to interact by focusing on certain points.

Apple is consolidating power within the smartwatch industry at an alarming rate. A growing number of competitors are exiting the space as the anticipation and promise found with wrist computing has materialized for only a select few. For the rest,smartwatches have been nothing but frustration and despair. The writing is on the wall. There isn't a smartwatch industry. Instead, there's only an Apple Watch industry.The Beginning Even though it feels like the smartwatch is a relatively new phenomenon, the idea of redefining utility on the wrist is more than five years old. Apple began to investigate a device for the...

<p>Even as the new Apple Watch piques consumer interest in wrist-worn devices, the pace of innovation and the tumbling cost, and size, of components will make wearables smaller - so small, some in the industry say, that no one will see them.</p>