The Doctor Is In: Health App Interfaces and The Future of Health Trackers
Nobody likes being sick and we tend to put off trips to the doctor until we’re really under the weather. Since that’s just how we are, we create all sorts of gadgets which can help diagnose illness without visiting the doc. A health tracker’s main draw is being able to monitor your physical state without getting off the couch. If you use them right, health trackers can really improve your quality of life. It goes without saying, however, that relying on them 100% isn’t the best idea.
We’ve developed our own prototype health tracker and it delivers with the latest technology. We’ll investigate how to use it by checking out a few case studies in this article. Some of the cases have already been applied while others are still in the development stage and may become manifest as, say, figuring out blood glucose levels without an invasive procedure.
First and foremost, it’s important to note that the popularity of health and fitness trackers is declining year by year. Simply put, they’re non-functional and uninformative. Smartwatches, meanwhile, are picking up major steam. But they, too, have limited functionality for staying on top of your health. Mostly this is because today’s tech lacks the necessary sensors on the smartwatch body. We think every device has its place and a health tracker isn’t pretending to be some luxury accent for your wrist so it’s not going to replace a classic watch.
There are tons of different wearables on the market which work alongside smartphones, but they get unnecessarily complicated and don’t match our vision of a futuristic compact bracelet. The very foundation of our tracker comes equipped with specific sensors which pick up on the user’s unique physiological character. The tracker has a total of 6 such sensors, and each one is responsible for a physical aspect of the user. For example, determining heart rate or blood glucose levels.
This article is not going to go deep into the tracker’s technical details. Instead, we’re going to review the cases we dreamed up.
Dashboard
It’s essential to begin with a general understanding of the tracker’s interface. We surveyed plenty of health and fitness apps and weren’t impressed. Apps with massive functionality have overloaded interfaces which make navigation confusing. Our vision gets its cue from lightness and simple delivery of information. Here, we highlight only those physical parameters which are currently active or which require the user’s attention.
Counting Steps
Step counting is one of the most ubiquitous functionalities of fitness trackers and smartwatches. Jean Fernel invented the first step counter in 1525. Even back then, people understood the relationship between physical activity and well-being. To stay in top shape, a person requires no fewer than 3 thousand steps a day, and ideally, 10 thousand. In this case, we aren’t offering anything Jean Fernel didn’t know, but we worked out the visual components since current versions don’t satisfy us and don’t align with what the future holds in store.
Calories Consumption Tracker
Nothing new here, either, but we wanted to offer automatic calculation of calories, since everywhere else, calories must be entered manually. Developing this technology began in 2014 and has attracted $8 million in investments. But the bracelet was a disappointment due to a huge error. The reality is that a demand for the functionality remains sky high because people just don’t use current caloric monitors due to the difficulty of manually entering the details of every bite. Here are a few uber-contemporary conceptions of a case like this:
Heart Rate Monitoring
Now we get to the big time cases, the ones undeniably linked to your physical state. Monitoring these parameters will definitely make an impact on your overall well-being. Obviously, nothing is more reliable than a standard ECG for checking on heart health, which typically have 6 chest leads. Our tracker concept realizes just one of the leads and measures pulse. For accurate ECG readings with a tracker, we’d need to make some big tech strides. There are some portable devices, however, which allow users to do ECG monitoring at home.
Smart Blood Glucose Meter
Ask any diabetic if they love pricking their finger each day to measure blood glucose levels. We’re guessing, not so much. There have been developments underway for several years aimed at non-invasive means of measuring sugar levels. The methods are out there. The only snag is their reliability. However, one of our bracelet’s sensors lets users measure glucose by optical means.
Smart Alert UV Rays
Research shows that ultraviolet rays pose serious health risks. Our great idea? Alerts throughout the day when UV rays are most dangerous, so that users can take simple steps to stay out of the sun. The stretchable skin sensor — built right into the bracelet — can monitor the effect of UV rays on skin.
To Sum It Up
We live in a thrilling time when technology is constantly evolving and pushing boundaries. Today’s new is tomorrow’s dated. On the one hand, change is driven by the customer’s wants and needs. On the other hand, eye-opening innovation has lead to the invention of things that were never thought possible.
If you want to gather essential info about your own body — there’s an app for that. The health tracker is the future of well-being.
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