Google has built a powerful health-tracking wristband, but won’t be releasing it for consumers.
The medical grade device is capable of tracking heart rate, heart rhythm and skin temperature on a minute-by-minute basis and is designed for use by researchers in clinical trials.
Built by Google’s life sciences group within its secretive X Labs, the unnamed wristband is also capable of capturing environmental information like noise and light exposure levels.
The head of Google’s life sciences team, Andy Conrad, told Bloomberg Business: “Our intended use is for this to become a medical device that’s prescribed to patients or used for clinical trials.”
Google says the powerful device goes beyond the capabilities of consumer tracking solutions like Fitbit, Jawbone and Apple Health, the latter having also opened up to medical trials recently. According to Google, current solutions aren’t vigorous enough to provide useful enough data to medical professionals.
Eventually, the company hopes all patients can be equipped with such devices with a view to spotting early signs of disease.
“I envision a day, in 20 or 30 years, where physicians give it to all patients,” said Conrad. “Prevention means all the time.”
Related: What is Google X? See what the company is cooking up
Google X is the company’s moonshot division, which has birthed projects like driverless cars, Google Glass and Project Moon.
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
