Samsung has revealed a new wearable health gadget called 'Simband' at an event in San Francisco. The health tracker monitors the human body in new ways, including checking blood glucose levels, heart rate, oxygen levels and much more.
Samsung has created Simband in partnership with IMEC and the University of California, San Francisco. The device users a variety of sensors, data and behavioral science and utilize Samsung’s new SAMI platform. It has a 28 nanometer 1GHz dual-core ARM A7 processor and supports Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity. The Simband fitness band design incorporates a new sensor module that can be used in future wearables, and Samsung has also announced a new cloud-based software platform called Samsung Architecture for Multimodal Interactions, or SAMI, that will gather sensor data from the health tracker for analysis.
Samsung isn’t actively pursuing the Simband as a commercial endeavor just yet, and instead calls the modular health smartwatch an “investigational device”. The electronics giants says that Simband and SAMI platform have a long way to go and many of the healthcare APIs and hardware features are still in the works. Samsung added that they need to improve the battery life of the device so that the sensors will be able to work 24/7 without delay. The company also announced a "digital health challenge" with a reward of $50 million investment to groups working on healthcare tracking projects.
Young Sohn, chief strategy officer of Samsung, said during an event Wednesday at the SFJazz Center in San Francisco, "Better understanding one's physical well-being is the single biggest opportunity of our generation. Our goal is someday you have sensors that know much more about your body."
Simband and the SAMI platform are a step ahead in Samsung's health-related ambitions. The company has already launched the Galaxy Gear Fit and its flagship smartphone the Galaxy S5 also features a lot of health related features. The electronics giant has launched Simband just ahead of Apple’s WWDC 2014 event, which is also expected to focus on Apple’s Healthbook platform along with its own health-tracking wearable.
Source: CNET