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Tag Archives: wearables

Current And Future Role Of Wearables In Healthcare

June 4, 2019   SAP
 Current And Future Role Of Wearables In Healthcare

When you think about the role of technology in healthcare, the first things that probably come to mind are new treatment methods, fancy diagnostic equipment, and so on. However, we are likely standing on the threshold of a complete transformation of the healthcare industry by something that, at a glance, looks much humbler: wearables that merely provide doctors with information about their patients.

There are already plenty of medical applications for wearables, and the market is projected to grow to $ 60 billion by 2023. Let’s take a look at what this means for the industry.

Personalization

John Hancock, one of the most prominent North American insurers, stated in late 2018 that it intends to stop selling traditional life insurance and will instead adopt interactive policies that track fitness and health data via wearable devices and smartphones. This means the health status of every client will be tracked and considered when the company determines the risks associated with the individual’s lifestyle and habits. Clients with habits associated with shorter lifespans (e.g., smoking, low levels of physical activity, unhealthy diet) will have to pay higher premiums. In the long run, this affects not just the insurance industry but healthcare as well, as clients are incentivized to adopt healthier lifestyles, thus decreasing the strain on healthcare.

Remote patient monitoring

While a small smartwatch isn’t as accurate as a full-scale electrocardiograph with 12 electrodes, it has a significant advantage: you can wear it all day, every day. Measuring pulse throughout the day across a wide range of activities is far from the only health measurement a smartwatch can provide. The more data these devices gather, the greater the possibility for healthcare to establish a preventive model that interprets patient data and calls for treatment before a crisis.

Early diagnosis

The wide adoption of wearables that track patients’ health stats enables the collection of huge amounts of data that can be used to establish patterns with the help of AI and machine learning. The system will be able to use the data collected from each individual to predict potential health problems before they arise, allowing for cheaper and more effective preventive measures, as opposed to treating a disease when it is in full swing.

Medication adherence

Patients tend to forget or forgo taking their medications for many reasons. Wearables can alert people when it is time to take their meds, track when they take them, and inform doctors when they don’t adhere to the prescribed regimen. As a result, medical professionals can monitor how strictly their patients follow instructions at home.

More complete information

Normally, doctors have very limited information about their cases. They have to rely on what patients report about their symptoms and the onset of the illness (data which is often incomplete or imprecise) and the patients’ medical history based on their previous interactions (which, again, may be limited). A wearable device collects all of a patient’s data in real time, it doesn’t make mistakes or forget to report an important symptom. As a result, a doctor gets an exhaustive report on the patient’s condition over time and can make a more thorough analysis, leading to more informed and optimal decision-making.

Cost savings

Widescale adoption of expensive wearables and accompanying tech may look like a significant investment, but it can save healthcare millions of dollars in the long run. These devices allow doctors to track their patients’ conditions at a distance, often eliminating the need to transfer them to a medical facility. Recognizing symptoms at an early stage allows for less expensive treatments.

These applications for wearables in the healthcare industry are still in their infancy, but we are likely to see this market grow at a breakneck pace in the coming years.

For more insights, visit the SAP Personalized Medicine online hub or continue the discussion on Twitter.

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Researchers propose AI framework for activity-detecting wearables

March 26, 2019   Big Data
 Researchers propose AI framework for activity detecting wearables

Activity-detecting wearables aren’t exactly novel — the Apple Watch, Fitbit’s lineup of fitness wearables, and countless smartwatches running Google’s WearOS interpret movements to determine whether you’re, say, jogging rather than walking. But many of the algorithmic models underlying their features need lots of human-generated training data, and typically they can’t make use of that data if it isn’t labeled by hand.

Fortunately, researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have developed a labor-saving solution they say could save valuable time. In a paper published on the preprint server Arxiv.org (“Few-Shot Learning-Based Human Activity Recognition“), they describe a few-shot learning technique — a technique to teach an AI model with a small amount of labeled training data by transferring knowledge from relevant tasks — optimized for wearable sensor-based activity recognition.

“Due to the high costs to obtain … activity data and the ubiquitous similarities between activity modes, it can be more efficient to borrow information from existing activity recognition models than to collect more data to train a new model from scratch when only a few data are available for model training,” the paper’s authors wrote. “The proposed few-shot human activity recognition method leverages a deep learning model for feature extraction and classification while knowledge transfer is performed in the manner of model parameter transfer.”

Concretely, the team devised a framework — few-shot human activity recognition (FSHAR) — comprising three steps. First, a deep learning model — specifically a long-short term memory (LSTM) network, a type of recurrent neural network that can capture long-term dependencies — that transforms low-level sensor input into high-level semantic information is trained with samples. Next, data that’s relevant or helpful to learning the target task (or tasks) is mathematically discerned and separated from that which isn’t relevant. Lastly, the parameters for the network — i.e., the variables machine-learned from historical training data — are fine-tuned before they’re transferred to a target network.

To validate their approach, the researchers performed experiments with 331 samples from two benchmark data sets: opportunity activity recognition data set (OPP), which consists of common kitchen activities from four participants with wearable sensors recorded over five different runs, and physical activity monitoring data set (PAMAP2), which comprises 12 household and exercise activities from nine participants with wearables.

Compared with the baseline, they claim that FSHAR methods “almost always” achieved the best performances.

“With the proposed framework, satisfying human activity recognition results can be achieved even when only very few training samples are available for each class,” they wrote. “Experimental results show the advantages of the framework over methods with no knowledge transfer or that only transfer knowledge of feature extractor.”

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Empower People With Health Wearables: Mixing Tech And Health

December 16, 2017   SAP

When members of Lowe’s Innovation Labs first began talking with the home improvement retailer’s senior executives about how disruptive technologies would affect the future, the presentations were well received but nothing stuck.

“We’d give a really great presentation and everyone would say, ‘Great job,’ but nothing would really happen,” says Amanda Manna, head of narratives and partnerships for the lab.

The team realized that it needed to ditch the PowerPoints and try something radical. The team’s leader, Kyle Nel, is a behavioral scientist by training. He knows people are wired to receive new information best through stories. Sharing far-future concepts through narrative, he surmised, could unlock hidden potential to drive meaningful change.

So Nel hired science fiction writers to pen the future in comic book format, with characters and a narrative arc revealed pane by pane.

The first storyline, written several years before Oculus Rift became a household name, told the tale of a couple envisioning their kitchen renovation using virtual reality headsets. The comic might have been fun and fanciful, but its intent was deadly serious. It was a vision of a future in which Lowe’s might solve one of its long-standing struggles: the approximately US$ 70 billion left on the table when people are unable to start a home improvement project because they can’t envision what it will look like.

When the lab presented leaders with the first comic, “it was like a light bulb went on,” says Manna. “Not only did they immediately understand the value of the concept, they were convinced that if we didn’t build it, someone else would.”

Today, Lowe’s customers in select stores can use the HoloRoom How To virtual reality tool to learn basic DIY skills in an interactive and immersive environment.

SAP Q417 DigitalDoubles Feature3 Image2 Empower People With Health Wearables: Mixing Tech And HealthOther comics followed and were greeted with similar enthusiasm—and investment, where possible. One tells the story of robots that help customers navigate stores. That comic spawned the LoweBot, which roamed the aisles of several Lowe’s stores during a pilot program in California and is being evaluated to determine next steps.

And the comic about tools that can be 3D-printed in space? Last year, Lowe’s partnered with Made in Space, which specializes in making 3D printers that can operate in zero gravity, to install the first commercial 3D printer in the International Space Station, where it was used to make tools and parts for astronauts.

The comics are the result of sending writers out on an open-ended assignment, armed with trends, market research, and other input, to envision what home improvement planning might look like in the future or what the experience of shopping will be in 10 years. The writers come back with several potential story ideas in a given area and work collaboratively with lab team members to refine it over time.

The process of working with writers and business partners to develop the comics helps the future strategy team at Lowe’s, working under chief development officer Richard D. Maltsbarger, to inhabit that future. They can imagine how it might play out, what obstacles might surface, and what steps the company would need to take to bring that future to life.

Once the final vision hits the page, the lab team can clearly envision how to work backward to enable the innovation. Importantly, the narrative is shared not only within the company but also out in the world. It serves as a kind of “bat signal” to potential technology partners with capabilities that might be required to make it happen, says Manna. “It’s all part of our strategy for staking a claim in the future.”

Companies like Lowe’s are realizing that standard ways of planning for the future won’t get them where they need to go. The problem with traditional strategic planning is that the approach, which dates back to the 1950s and has remained largely unchanged since then, is based on the company’s existing mission, resources, core competencies, and competitors.

Yet the future rarely looks like the past. What’s more, digital technology is now driving change at exponential rates. Companies must be able to analyze and assess the potential impacts of the many variables at play, determine the possible futures they want to pursue, and develop the agility to pivot as conditions change along the way.

This is why planning must become completely oriented toward—and sourced from—the future, rather than from the past or the present. “Every winning strategy is based on a compelling insight, but most strategic planning originates in today’s marketplace, which means the resulting plans are constrained to incremental innovation,” says Bob Johansen, distinguished fellow at the Institute for the Future. “Most corporate strategists and CEOs are just inching their way to the future.” (Read more from Bob Johansen in the Thinkers story, “Fear Factor.”)

Inching forward won’t cut it anymore. Half of the S&P 500 organizations will be replaced over the next decade, according to research company Innosight. The reason? They can’t see the portfolio of possible futures, they can’t act on them, or both. Indeed, when SAP conducts future planning workshops with clients, we find that they usually struggle to look beyond current models and assumptions and lack clear ideas about how to work toward radically different futures.

Companies that want to increase their chances of long-term survival are incorporating three steps: envisioning, planning for, and executing on possible futures. And doing so all while the actual future is unfolding in expected and unexpected ways.

Those that pull it off are rewarded. A 2017 benchmarking report from the Strategic Foresight Research Network (SFRN) revealed that vigilant companies (those with the most mature processes for identifying, interpreting, and responding to factors that induce change) achieved 200% greater market capitalization growth and 33% higher profitability than the average, while the least mature companies experienced negative market-cap growth and had 44% lower profitability.

SAP Q417 DigitalDoubles Feature3 Image3 1024x572 Empower People With Health Wearables: Mixing Tech And Health

Looking Outside the Margins

“Most organizations lack sufficient capacity to detect, interpret, and act on the critically important but weak and ambiguous signals of fresh threats or new opportunities that emerge on the periphery of their usual business environment,” write George S. Day and Paul J. H. Schoemaker in their book Peripheral Vision.

But that’s exactly where effective future planning begins: examining what is happening outside the margins of day-to-day business as usual in order to peer into the future.

Business leaders who take this approach understand that despite the uncertainties of the future there are drivers of change that can be identified and studied and actions that can be taken to better prepare for—and influence—how events unfold.

That starts with developing foresight, typically a decade out. Ten years, most future planners agree, is the sweet spot. “It is far enough out that it gives you a bit more latitude to come up with a broader way to the future, allowing for disruption and innovation,” says Brian David Johnson, former chief futurist for Intel and current futurist in residence at Arizona State University’s Center for Science and the Imagination. “But you can still see the light from it.”

SAP Q417 DigitalDoubles Feature3 Image4 Empower People With Health Wearables: Mixing Tech And HealthThe process involves gathering information about the factors and forces—technological, business, sociological, and industry or ecosystem trends—that are effecting change to envision a range of potential impacts.

Seeing New Worlds

Intel, for example, looks beyond its own industry boundaries to envision possible future developments in adjacent businesses in the larger ecosystem it operates in. In 2008, the Intel Labs team, led by anthropologist Genevieve Bell, determined that the introduction of flexible glass displays would open up a whole new category of foldable consumer electronic devices.

To take advantage of that advance, Intel would need to be able to make silicon small enough to fit into some imagined device of the future. By the time glass manufacturer Corning unveiled its ultra-slim, flexible glass surface for mobile devices, laptops, televisions, and other displays of the future in 2012, Intel had already created design prototypes and kicked its development into higher gear. “Because we had done the future casting, we were already imagining how people might use flexible glass to create consumer devices,” says Johnson.

Because future planning relies so heavily on the quality of the input it receives, bringing in experts can elevate the practice. They can come from inside an organization, but the most influential insight may come from the outside and span a wide range of disciplines, says Steve Brown, a futurist, consultant, and CEO of BaldFuturist.com who worked for Intel Labs from 2007 to 2016.

Companies may look to sociologists or behaviorists who have insight into the needs and wants of people and how that influences their actions. Some organizations bring in an applied futurist, skilled at scanning many different forces and factors likely to coalesce in important ways (see Do You Need a Futurist?).

Do You Need a Futurist?

Most organizations need an outsider to help envision their future. Futurists are good at looking beyond the big picture to the biggest picture.

Business leaders who want to be better prepared for an uncertain and disruptive future will build future planning as a strategic capability into their organizations and create an organizational culture that embraces the approach. But working with credible futurists, at least in the beginning, can jump-start the process.

“The present can be so noisy and business leaders are so close to it that it’s helpful to provide a fresh outside-in point of view,” says veteran futurist Bob Johansen.

To put it simply, futurists like Johansen are good at connecting dots—lots of them. They look beyond the boundaries of a single company or even an industry, incorporating into their work social science, technical research, cultural movements, economic data, trends, and the input of other experts.

They can also factor in the cultural history of the specific company with whom they’re working, says Brian David Johnson, futurist in residence at Arizona State University’s Center for Science and the Imagination. “These large corporations have processes and procedures in place—typically for good reasons,” Johnson explains. “But all of those reasons have everything to do with the past and nothing to do with the future. Looking at that is important so you can understand the inertia that you need to overcome.”

One thing the best futurists will say they can’t do: predict the future. That’s not the point. “The future punishes certainty,” Johansen says, “but it rewards clarity.” The methods futurists employ are designed to trigger discussions and considerations of possibilities corporate leaders might not otherwise consider.

You don’t even necessarily have to buy into all the foresight that results, says Johansen. Many leaders don’t. “Every forecast is debatable,” Johansen says. “Foresight is a way to provoke insight, even if you don’t believe it. The value is in letting yourself be provoked.”

External expert input serves several purposes. It brings everyone up to a common level of knowledge. It can stimulate and shift the thinking of participants by introducing them to new information or ideas. And it can challenge the status quo by illustrating how people and organizations in different sectors are harnessing emerging trends.

The goal is not to come up with one definitive future but multiple possibilities—positive and negative—along with a list of the likely obstacles or accelerants that could surface on the road ahead. The result: increased clarity—rather than certainty—in the face of the unknown that enables business decision makers to execute and refine business plans and strategy over time.

Plotting the Steps Along the Way

Coming up with potential trends is an important first step in futuring, but even more critical is figuring out what steps need to be taken along the way: eight years from now, four years from now, two years from now, and now. Considerations include technologies to develop, infrastructure to deploy, talent to hire, partnerships to forge, and acquisitions to make. Without this vital step, says Brown, everybody goes back to their day jobs and the new thinking generated by future planning is wasted. To work, the future steps must be tangible, concrete, and actionable.

SAP Q417 DigitalDoubles Feature3 Image5 Empower People With Health Wearables: Mixing Tech And HealthOrganizations must build a roadmap for the desired future state that anticipates both developments and detours, complete with signals that will let them know if they’re headed in the right direction. Brown works with corporate leaders to set indicator flags to look out for on the way to the anticipated future. “If we see these flagged events occurring in the ecosystem, they help to confirm the strength of our hypothesis that a particular imagined future is likely to occur,” he explains.

For example, one of Brown’s clients envisioned two potential futures: one in which gestural interfaces took hold and another in which voice control dominated. The team set a flag to look out for early examples of the interfaces that emerged in areas such as home appliances and automobiles. “Once you saw not just Amazon Echo but also Google Home and other copycat speakers, it would increase your confidence that you were moving more towards a voice-first era rather than a gesture-first era,” Brown says. “It doesn’t mean that gesture won’t happen, but it’s less likely to be the predominant modality for communication.”

How to Keep Experiments from Being Stifled

Once organizations have a vision for the future, making it a reality requires testing ideas in the marketplace and then scaling them across the enterprise. “There’s a huge change piece involved,”
says Frank Diana, futurist and global consultant with Tata Consultancy Services, “and that’s the place where most
businesses will fall down.”

Many large firms have forgotten what it’s like to experiment in several new markets on a small scale to determine what will stick and what won’t, says René Rohrbeck, professor of strategy at the Aarhus School of Business and Social Sciences. Companies must be able to fail quickly, bring the lessons learned back in, adapt, and try again.

SAP Q417 DigitalDoubles Feature3 Image6 Empower People With Health Wearables: Mixing Tech And HealthLowe’s increases its chances of success by creating master narratives across a number of different areas at once, such as robotics, mixed-reality tools, on-demand manufacturing, sustainability, and startup acceleration. The lab maps components of each by expected timelines: short, medium, and long term. “From there, we’ll try to build as many of them as quickly as we can,” says Manna. “And we’re always looking for that next suite of things that we should be working on.” Along the way certain innovations, like the HoloRoom How-To, become developed enough to integrate into the larger business as part of the core strategy.

One way Lowe’s accelerates the process of deciding what is ready to scale is by being open about its nascent plans with the world. “In the past, Lowe’s would never talk about projects that weren’t at scale,” says Manna. Now the company is sharing its future plans with the media and, as a result, attracting partners that can jump-start their realization.

Seeing a Lowe’s comic about employee exoskeletons, for example, led Virginia Tech engineering professor Alan Asbeck to the retailer. He helped develop a prototype for a three-month pilot with stock employees at a Christiansburg, Virginia, store.

The high-tech suit makes it easier to move heavy objects. Employees trying out the suits are also fitted with an EEG headset that the lab incorporates into all its pilots to gauge unstated, subconscious reactions. That direct feedback on the user experience helps the company refine its innovations over time.

SAP Q417 DigitalDoubles Feature3 Image7 1024x572 Empower People With Health Wearables: Mixing Tech And Health

Make the Future Part of the Culture

Regardless of whether all the elements of its master narratives come to pass, Lowe’s has already accomplished something important: It has embedded future thinking into the culture of the company.

Companies like Lowe’s constantly scan the environment for meaningful economic, technology, and cultural changes that could impact its future assessments and plans. “They can regularly draw on future planning to answer challenges,” says Rohrbeck. “This intensive, ongoing, agile strategizing is only possible because they’ve done their homework up front and they keep it updated.”

It’s impossible to predict what’s going to happen in the future, but companies can help to shape it, says Manna of Lowe’s. “It’s really about painting a picture of a preferred future state that we can try to achieve while being flexible and capable of change as we learn things along the way.” D!


About the Authors

Dan Wellers is Global Lead, Digital Futures, at SAP.

Kai Goerlich is Chief Futurist at SAP’s Innovation Center Network.

Stephanie Overby is a Boston-based business and technology journalist.


Read more thought provoking articles in the latest issue of the Digitalist Magazine, Executive Quarterly.

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ProBeat: Wearables are gimmicks

July 22, 2017   Big Data
 ProBeat: Wearables are gimmicks

It’s been a tough month for wearables. Two weeks ago, The Information revealed that Jawbone is being liquidated. This week, CNBC reported that Intel had axed its wearables division.

As my colleagues and friends know, I’m one of the biggest skeptics of wearables in the world. As such, neither of these stories shocked me in the slightest.

At the same time, though, I’m also incredibly bullish on what wearables will one day accomplish. The technology just isn’t here yet.

None of today’s wearables excite me (many concepts and prototypes do, but that’s the case for almost any space). I’ve thought about this for a long time, and the reality is that wearables simply don’t do anything that I wish they could.

I want a device that can truly accomplish what my phone can’t. I don’t care for a wearable that can tell the time, make phone calls, send messages, run apps, and count my steps.

I don’t want a shitty phone on my wrist. Nor on my face.

Google Glass Explorer Edition relaunched this week as Enterprise Glass Edition. I’m happy to see that Google has found a niche for the product, but it’s depressing the company has put the dream of prescription glasses and contact lenses with AR functionality on the back burner.

I want a device that can monitor exactly what I’ve consumed and measure what I have gained (or lost) from it. I want a device that can measure how long I’ve rested and whether it is enough for the life I live. I want a device that can determine what my body really needs based on the information it gathers. That means anything from a recommendation to go for a run today because I’ve been immobile for too long or to eat a specific vegetable because I’m missing a given nutrient.

I strongly believe this is coming. But until the technology arrives, I’m not surprised that startups are folding and tech giants are looking elsewhere.

The good news is that many people do find wearables in their current iteration to be useful. Companies are clearly interested in augmented glasses, while consumers are still buying smartwatches and fitness trackers.

Indeed, IDC estimated last month that wearables grew 17.9 percent in Q1 2017. The top five companies (Xiaomi, Apple, Fitbit, Samsung, and Garmin) aren’t throwing in the towel.

As long as there is at least some demand, money will be invested in the space. And hopefully, those investments will one day pay off with a device that stands on its own.

Attached to your body, of course.

ProBeat is a column in which Emil rants about whatever crosses him that week.

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Hearables – Moving beyond Wearables

July 14, 2015   Mobile and Cloud

Heard about Hearables? Yep, that’s the newest bubble extending from the wearables space. While most wearables are designed for the wrist, this new category of wearables is built for the ear. As the name suggests, these devices are typically used to capture data through the ear.

Hearables Hearables – Moving beyond Wearables

Hearables are exciting due to many reasons. Firstly, it just feels natural to adopt hearables. The first breed of smartwatches seem like a clunky, limited gadget for most users. The other gadgets such as Fitness trackers also seem like an additional burden to users. Hearables, thanks to our familiarity with headphones, can be adopted very naturally. They also come in the forms of smart earrings.

These ear-loving devices can be a boon for the healthcare industry. It can help healthcare professionals to collect and track valuable data from their patients. It can also be connected with apps on the smartphone. You can easily track things such as heart rate, oxygen intake, body temperature and other such health data.

The current breed of hearables are looking to cash in on the fitness trend. Bragi, a German company, has launched a smart in-ear headphone that can be used to listen to music as well as receive feedback on fitness activities. Valencell is yet another firm which is focused on hearables for the healthcare industry.

Another company which is doing interesting things in the hearables space is Doppler Labs which is trying to “change the way we hear the world”. The company has just raised $ 17 million from investors.

A few reports have suggested that the world will be spending $ 5 billion on the hearables segment by 2018. Experts think that Apple has the potential to become a leading player in the hearables category thanks to its acquisition of Beats. In fact, many people have predicted that the next interesting thing from Apple could be an audible device. Mobile giants Samsung and Google can also easily lead the market owing to their giant marketshare.

The increasing demand for hearables will also generate lots of opportunities for skilled IT service providers. Bragi has plans to release an SDK, through which unprocessed and processed data and audio feeds can be collected and integrated with applications. This will allow businesses to build interesting applications around the available data streams.

Hearables – Moving beyond Wearables? Our ears are open!

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Wearables in the workplace strain existing GRC policies

February 6, 2015   DWH News and Info

As if bring your own device (BYOD) policies weren’t complicated enough, wearable technologies seem poised to throw a wrench in established approaches to management. Wearables have been gaining traction in the enterprise as new devices offer the promise of improving productivity, business processes and even the fitness of employees.

Wearable technology shows no sign of slowing down: In TrendMicro’s survey of 100 senior IT decisionmakers, 82 %of respondents said their organizations’ BYOD security policies will have to change in order to account for wearables in the workplace.

How will policies change? How can companies assure BYOD policies are flexible enough to handle wearables while also guaranteeing that sensorized data is compliant? In this #GRCChat recap, participants discuss the effect of wearables on established MDM and what businesses can do to ensure data compliance.

#GRCChatters were quick to point out the uncertainties around where wearables fit into larger mobile device management (MDM) strategies. The technology is so new that few policy precedents exist, making incorporating wearables in the workplace a challenge not only to security and compliance, but also to user experience:

A4 Wearables creates many new GRC complications- another type of device to worry about as source of potential data leak #GRCChat

— Ben Cole (@BenjaminCole11) January 22, 2015

@ITCompliance A3 #Wearables still so new that co’s using them prob dont have policy around the data they collect and how it’s used. #GRCChat

— RachelTT (@RachelatTT) January 22, 2015

A3: I have no good answer yet. Sandboxing to separate data/apps may help. Keeping it all off-device is good but tough on UX/UI. #grcchat

— Forvalaka41 (@Forvalaka41) January 22, 2015

An important factor, according to SearchCompliance Editor Ben Cole, is to pay special attention to precisely which devices have the potential to enter the enterprise:

A4 It’s important to stay ahead of the game- review the market to see what wearables are popular and moving into corporate use #GRCchat

— Ben Cole (@BenjaminCole11) January 22, 2015

@BenjaminCole11 And it looks like the wearables-in-business trend won’t be ‘deflating’ anytime soon #harharhar #GRCChat

— FinServGRC (@FinServGRC) January 22, 2015

(Yes, this chat took place during the height of #DeflateGate.)

Lack of standardization is a challenge for wearables policies because it is hard to identify the right device-governance practices. SearchCompliance Associate Editor Francesca Sales raised a question about controlling device usage and data access within a company:

a4 how about standardizing and limiting what devices can access corp data to just certain devices? #grcchat

— Fran Sales (@Fran_S_TT) January 22, 2015

. absolutely @Fran_S_TT – some companies do have clear lines about what devices are acceptable, and what data is allowed on them #GRCChat

— Ben Cole (@BenjaminCole11) January 22, 2015

With wearable devices potentially recording a lot of sensitive, personal information about the wearer, bringing those devices into the workplace raises significant privacy concerns. Who has access to that information? How much privacy should employees expect? SearchCIO Senior News Writer Nicole Laskowski broached the subject of wearables privacy:

A4 Talk about personal privacy. How does IT ensure privacy when it comes to wearable devices? #GRCchat

— Nicole Laskowski (@TT_Nicole) January 22, 2015

. @TT_Nicole don’t think IT can ensure total employee privacy- have to to protect company info on these devices and keep compliant #GRCChat

— Ben Cole (@BenjaminCole11) January 22, 2015

@BenjaminCole11 @TT_Nicole so govern around the data itself and not around devices? #grcchat

— Fran Sales (@Fran_S_TT) January 22, 2015

@Fran_S_TT @BenjaminCole11 @TT_Nicole #grcchat If you have to have BYOD touch corp. sys/data, write apps that encrypt all and store nothing.

— Forvalaka41 (@Forvalaka41) January 22, 2015

Security is another concern. Wearable devices may move on and off a company’s network frequently and, with their increasing use for email and other business-related communications, may carry sensitive company data. But, as one participant pointed out, it’s not just the data that needs to be secured — it’s the devices themselves:

A4: The smaller it is, the easier it is to steal or misplace. Protocols between wrist and phone have to be secure too. #grcchat

— Forvalaka41 (@Forvalaka41) January 22, 2015

How do you think wearables in the workplace will affect mobile device management? Sound off in the comments section below.

Next Steps

For more on BYOD governance, check out this #GRCChat recap on enforcing GRC essentials for a strong BYOD security policy. Then, read through this Q&A to get an expert’s take on overcoming the data governance complications of wearable technology.

Recommended article: Chomsky: We Are All – Fill in the Blank.
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Wearables At Work? Think Productivity.

January 22, 2015   BI News and Info

Getting fit (or fitter) as a personal goal tends to be at the top of almost everyone’s list – but it  Wearables At Work? Think Productivity.isn’t always at the top of a company’s list making it difficult to stick to those resolutions or personal milestones. However, there are some companies who are realizing that this personal goal, supported by their place of employment, could work to everyone’s advantage.

Simply put, healthier employees can equal happier and more productive workers.

Companies investing in employee health and wellness often see at least an eight percent increase in workplace productivity. So why wouldn’t companies work to implement this mentality into the company culture? Luckily, it’s becoming easier as companies leverage new technologies such as wearable tech to reinforce this initiative.

With a focus on employee satisfaction and simplicity to fostering in a productive workforce, companies, such as BP, Autodesk, VISTA Staffing Solutions have invested in using wrist devices as part of their wellness programs. BP offers employees Fitbit trackers, which counts steps, track distance and calories, measures sleep quality, and has many other features. With these Fitbit trackers, BP has a million step challenge to encourage employees to make fitness a part of their daily routine. Both BP and its employees benefit from this program through higher productivity, lower healthcare costs, and a happier work environment.

Autodesk also uses Fitbit as part of the overall wellness program. The company started noticing a difference as employees parked farther from the office, walked to work, and would take the long way to meetings or the bathroom – just so they could log their steps.

VISTA Staffing Solutions employees use Fitbit trackers and wi-fi enabled scales in their Retrofit weight loss program. The company estimated that the wellness program, “decreased absenteeism, resulted in a healthier and happier workplace, and is saving the company about $ 38,035 annually due to decreased medical expenses and increased productivity.” One employee said the program saved her life, helping her lose 47 pounds in nine months and encouraged her to add exercise and healthier eating habits to her daily routine.

Whether it be the Jawbone Up, Nike+ FuelBand, or the popular Fitbit trackers, wearable tech promotes healthy lifestyle changes. According to ABI Research, 13 million wearable devices will be integrated into corporate-wellness plans over the next five years. Fitbit has a corporate wellness solution for any type of business, from small businesses to enterprise size companies. Wearable tech can help businesses and employees have better approaches to a healthy lifestyle, fewer sick days, lower health costs, and an overall clearer path to employee satisfaction.

Recommended article: Chomsky: We Are All – Fill in the Blank.
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Innovation » Jen Cohen Crompton

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Business Innovation Heads-Up Wearables

January 21, 2015   Salesforce

 Business Innovation Heads Up Wearables

The enormous technology event, the Consumer Electronics Show, wrapped up earlier this month in Las Vegas, and of all the technologies on show, it was the wearables category that experienced the most growth.

The blending of wearable technology, sport and fashion is certainly taking off. But with Google announcing that it would no longer be selling Google Glass from 19 January 2015, is there true value in the wearables sector for small business? Or is the entire wearables industry effectively dead on arrival?

To answer these questions we need to distinguish between wearable categories. In terms of products, the wearables industry can be divided into three basic functions:

  1. Fitness, fashion and individual exploration of the world

  2. Health services, training and public safety

  3. Business process optimisation

While the focus of mainstream media has centered primarily on the first of these categories, with everything from the FitBit and Google Glass to the (still unavailable) Apple Watch, as well as a whole swathe of digital clothing devices, these have primarily been consumer-oriented products. They don’t offer a significant benefit to a business unless you happen to be selling them. Even in the health services category, products such as heart monitoring shirts, smart socks (measuring running techniques) and UV exposure watches have limited use in business environments.  

The true value of wearables for businesses resides in the somewhat less flashy end of the market, in employee safety, training and business optimisation. Where a business has employees on dangerous work sites, for instance, or where the general health of the worker can be compromised in normal, day-to-day activities, then wearables become a logical business investment. Not only can these devices improve productivity, but they can reduce operational risks while improving employee welfare.

Examples of workplace safety wearables include:

  • Halo helmet and vest lighting: allowing workers in light-reduced spaces to be seen from all directions

  • Heat stress monitors: for firefighters, miners, construction workers and other field workers, exposed to dangerous conditions

  • Airbag collars: triggered by falls or sudden impact

  • Repetitive motion sensing monitors: for workers who are at risk of physical injury through repetitive activities

  • Air quality masks: fitted with detection devices for pollutants.  

For training, the use of wearables as a means of recording manual actions in the real world has some logic, particularly where holding a video camera is difficult. GoPro units which have generally been associated with extreme sports, can also be worn in workplaces to record the perspective of a worker, both for health and safety and training purposes.

Then there are the purely business optimisation-oriented wearables. Outliers certainly, these devices are designed to track employee positions, enable easy registration of absences from work, or time business conversations. But while these functions are obvious, employers need to be careful about how they deploy them in order to maximise productivity without depriving staff of their personal privacy.

In a recent report, Forrester noted that there was significant interest among US workers in adopting wearables in the workplace. Less clear was what these workers would actually want their wearables to do. But it’s clear that there is a potential benefit to businesses with either a mobile workforce, or an employee base whose health is routinely put at risk through environmental exposure.

A common sense approach for the need for wearables needs to be applied in business. There may be great enthusiasm for wearables amongst workers, but without adequate rationale for investment, you may just be purchasing a toy that will soon be discarded.

About the Author: 

 Business Innovation Heads Up WearablesJoanne Jacobs is an award-winning digital strategist and company director.  She advises firms on executive management skills, digital change management and social data analysis.  She is on the Board of Code Club Australia, and she is an active mentor of startups at the Telstra accelerator, Muru-D.  She formerly ran the Australian office of 1000heads, a word of mouth marketing firm.

Wearable technology is obviously on the rise, and here at Salesforce we are taking great strides to help companies and their employees realise the full potential of this technology no matter what size business you are.

 

Recommended article: Chomsky: We Are All – Fill in the Blank.
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Hey, wearables makers: Here’s what we want from you this year

January 7, 2015   Big Data

I’m entering 2015 needing more from my wearables. Yes, I can track steps, sleep, calories, and heart rate. But I’m still drowning in meaningless data and wondering how much value my devices really bring me.

Consider Jawbone Up 24 — one of my preferred devices — it tracks steps, sleep, and if you’re diligent enough (I am not), the food you eat. All of these functions essentially tell you what you’re doing, but they don’t tell you how or why to make adjustments. For instance, the companion app doesn’t suggest how to get a better night’s sleep, nor does the environment automatically adjust to help you recuperate from a workout.

In 2015, wearable devices will need to improve on this limited cataloging ability and actually show us how we can improve our lives in a meaningful way. They need to provide data that is contextual, actionable, and precise so that we can alter our behavior for the best.

Contextual Data

Contextual data would give you information that’s useful at a specific time of day. Not only would it help you sift through data noise more quickly, but it would also give you a better understanding of yourself over time.

Having access to a lot of data isn’t necessarily helpful if that data is presented in the wrong context. Take sleep trackers, for example. To get the most from sleep data, we need to get that information at times where we can make adjustments throughout the day and closer to bedtime. And we need some other data sources from our environment to help validate why and how we are getting a good or bad night’s sleep.

For example, imagine having a thermostat linked to a wearable device to note temperature changes in the room while we sleep. This data in addition to our sleep pattern monitor would help us quantitatively understand how temperature affects a good night’s sleep.

As our devices become more personal and linkable, the data we get will become more cohesive. If a device can contextualize the information, it can better understand how to improve on our surroundings and take the appropriate action. Eventually a mobile phone or wearable will be able to understand how to adjust an environment to our liking because of the contextual clues.

Actionable Data

Contextual data is not effective without the next piece of the puzzle, which is actionable data. Instead of seeing how many hours we slept and how much we tossed and turned, actionable data software could tell us what to do to make our sleep better. Advances in actionable data software would see adjustments in real time. For example, it could monitor the thermostat and adjust it as our sleep patterns change and the night progresses.

An early example of actionable data is Jawbone’s partnership with Big Ass Fans to create an experience where room fans can increase or decrease speed based on the temperature and humidity in your room.

In 2015, consumers will demand more collaborations like this, where technologies connect current siloed experiences and add true value and convenience to life. Companies will have to respond to consumer expectations or risk being left behind.

Whistle is a dog activity tracker that collects data to help vets better understand the activity level of dogs. The results can help pet owners, by recommending actions to improve pet health. Software like HealthKit gives developers the ability to create similar experiences — delivering data to our doctors who in turn can give us actionable recommendations to enhance our quality of life. However, for any of these functions to work precise instrumentation is necessary.

Precision and Accuracy

Wearables still aren’t as accurate as they should be. For many users, step counts vary in mysterious ways and heart rates fluctuate between “do I even have a pulse” and “I just walked three blocks, but it looks like I ran a marathon.” Manufacturers realize the inconsistencies and are working to improve on the existing hardware to increase precision.

Apple claims the upcoming Apple Watch will be able to track heart rate with the fidelity of most devices found in hospitals. Precision like that is vital if companies are to deliver on the promise that wearables will actually make our lives better.

As the connected home industry and the wearables market try to figure out how to integrate into all aspects of our lives, we will see more partnerships and open platforms for developers to enable devices to talk and work together. Laying this groundwork is part of the next age of computing where the context of data is king, and measuring value by the sheer volume of data becomes a thing of the past. While big data isn’t dead, it will take a back seat as companies provide more personalized experiences to their customers.

Elliott Chenger is an Android engineer and mobile developer at Mutual Mobile, an emerging tech agency that builds products for a more connected world.

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