Fitbit Co-Founder: The Future for Fitness goes way beyond the wrist

A Fitbit used to be a small gadget for counting your steps. Those days are long gone: Fitbits are now continuous heart and sleep monitors, with ambitions that go even deeper. Now owned by Google, Fitbit is still making new fitness trackers, such as the new Luxury. The company’s subscription-based Fitbit Premium service continues to add new wellness routines, including celebrity guides like Deepak Chopra.

Where are things going now? Will Fitbit ever go off the wrist? How can these trackers possibly help with diseases such as COVID-19?

Fitbit co-founder and CTO Eric Friedman offers some insights about where Fitbit is now and where the future is headed.

Shrink sensors on the wrist

Fitbit plans to continue to explore more advanced sensors on its larger watches, as the sensor technology trickles down to more optimized, smaller, cheaper bands over time. “Because they have a bigger battery and a little more bulk, it’s easier to try out and learn brand new sensors in them,” says Friedman of last year’s sensor-studded. Fitbit feeling – which adds temperature, a stress-sensitive electro-dermal sensor, and an electrocardiogram or EKG – compared to the much simpler new Fitbit Luxe, which relies primarily on its optical heart rate sensor for things like sleep and stress measurements.

Friedman makes the comparison to where the heart rate was on wearables years ago, living mostly on large watches, while smaller bands only measured steps. The optical heart rate sensor is also where most of the evolution has taken place, with many additional algorithm-based insights that didn’t exist before. “When we first launched the heart rate in our smartwatch, it was actually a kind of training experience,” says Friedman of where it was seven years ago. “But as things progressed, we started teasing more and more from the heartbeat.”

He sees heart rate variability as an important new measure, and associated atrial fibrillation. Fitbit recently completed an AFib study of 500,000 individuals, but unlike the Apple Watch, most Fitbits do not measure estimated atrial fibrillation through the optical heart rate sensor. For that you need a Fitbit Sense with its ECG function.

Possibilities of blood pressure

Fitbit’s watches don’t check for blood pressure just yet, but the company hopes a measurement called pulse arrival time could eventually be the answer to wrists. Pulse arrival time, which can be measured through Fitbit’s ECG-enabled Sense watch (but is not yet available to Sense users), compares the electrical signal from the EKG to the blood flow measured through the optical heart rate sensor. Friedman sees this as a possible route to estimated blood pressure readings further on.

“Obviously the ideal is that we get the absolute blood pressure, but even if we get the relative blood pressure and say, ‘Hey, something has changed, you have to check it out’, that would be a huge win for me too , “Says Friedman.” If it’s not relative blood pressure, something to heart health. There’s something out there, we just have to figure that out. “He says Fitbit’s progress in studying heart rate arrival time is still in its early stages.” We’ve been doing things internally, on friends and family. And we recently launched something where we asked some of our users to help us by collecting data, looking at how to generate a better signal, and ultimately helping them by giving them additional metrics. “

There are currently few wearables that measure blood pressure, other than the physical inflation Omron HeartGuideapproved by the US Food and Drug Administration and recently by Samsung Galaxy Watch active models (versions 2 and 3), which must be calibrated with a blood pressure cuff. It is an area where many companies still exist try to crack.

Ambient computing and fitness beyond the wrist

Google’s acquisition of Fitbit certainly points to possible integration with many other products, possibly even off-wrist devices such as the Nest Hub, which has just been added experimental sleep tracking using radar, but doesn’t hook into Fitbit.

“We are in the very early stages of integration, nothing to announce at this point,” said Friedman of Fitbit’s connections to the rest of the Google ecosystem. “But we are very excited about what Google has to offer in AI technology.”

But ambient computing, a vision of the always connected future that is a big focus for Google lately, could play a part in where Fitbit is going next. “I think ambient computing is really interesting, ambient sensing,” says Friedman. “I think there are some things that make sense for Fitbit to market, there are some things that make sense for Google plus Fitbit to market.”

Friedman sees the Fitbit mobile app as the hub, regardless. “There may be manifestations of some of that stuff on your wrist,” but that wrist-based technology is “not the most important thing.”

Wearables as a warning for illness (and COVID)

Despite it being over a year since the pandemic happened, wearable technology has not necessarily become the useful pulse indicator of disease symptoms many had hoped for. But many companies, including Fitbit, are still working on large-scale studies of the relationship between pulse data, such as heart rate variations and temperature, and the risk of illness.

Finding a way to incorporate these findings into a Fitbit software update is more challenging. Friedman says, “We can look at things like HRV (heart rate variability), SPO2 (blood oxygen), heart rate, sleep patterns, all of these things. We’re working to get that to market and we’re working with the FDA on fine-tuning. and specificity to find out what is right based on where the disease is today. “

Friedman sees this research as a doorway to raising awareness of disease symptoms in general, similar to what already exists on devices such as the Oura ring, but he’s also worried about getting it right. “Technology is not foolproof,” says Friedman. “We are working with both the medical establishment and the FDA to find out what is the right choice for public health.” Friedman also still sees challenges in building trust between Fitbit and its data and doctors who will be making their own assessments. In health technology it is a delicate transfer.

Fitbit’s future could be hyper-personalized

Friedman says the Fitbit Sense’s electrodermal EDA sensor for stress is the one that keeps him most excited about. But over the next 10 years, he sees the Fitbit platform continue to evolve as a tool that is increasingly being tailor-made.

“I think you’ll see a lot more of behavior change – behavior change and customization,” he says, also referring to finding ways to help people with health alerts that could potentially save their lives. “How can we be that seat belt for them?”

Sleep tracking didn’t become of interest to Fitbit, according to Friedman, until it looked like the information could be traded. He notes that the pandemic has been bad for health in many ways, but that sleep has actually improved, leading to a lower average resting heart rate.

Finally, Friedman sees the possibility of a more tailored future where coaching tools and guidance know how to treat people individually. “One of the things I underestimated when we started Fitbit was the power of the brain,” he says of trying to find ways that people listen to suggestions and don’t see them as judgmental. The approach can always be different, depending on who uses the service.

“I think that’s going to be where things will go in the next five to ten years, that hyper-personalization that drives that behavioral change. And then, of course, there are all kinds of other things to measure, both on and off the body, that I think are real. interesting.”

The information in this article is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended to be health or medical advice. Always consult a physician or other qualified health care practitioner if you have any questions about a medical condition or health goals.