Fitness trackers are very popular these days. They come in a wide variety of sizes and styles so anyone can find one to fit their lifestyle. According to 2014 studies, roughly 20 percent of adults in the United States has at least one fitness tracker device. However, only half of those adults actually use them, creating a big problem for the tech companies that make the fitness trackers.
Tech start-up Jawbone believes that they have the solution: an ingestible fitness tracker that you swallow. The company revealed their plans in a talk during the Code/Mobile Conference recently held in California. Jawbone says that ingestibles are the next wave of fitness technology. The FDA has already approved two ingestible sensors for human use.
The new fitness tracker will monitor your health from the inside out. The company says that swallowing the fitness tracker would be much more convenient than wearing one. Having the user swallow the fitness tracker also allows it to monitor a wide range of data not available to today’s fitness trackers.
The company intends to develop two different types of ingestible fitness trackers. The first would be a version that would pass through your system after a certain amount of time. These devices would be able to scan everything from heart rate to oxygen levels to digestion efficiency during its journey.
The second type of device would be able to stay in the bloodstream indefinitely. These devices would be used for long term health tracking, monitoring hormone levels, gut bacteria, and a wide range of other health indications. The new devices are still in the conceptual stage.
It will be more difficult to cheat the device if the fitness tracker is monitoring your health from the inside. The fitness trackers available today can be duped by certain repetitive motions. When the measurements come from the inside, the tracker knows if your heart rate hasn’t risen enough to indicate strenuous exercise.
In the future, Jawbone would like to develop a fitness tracker that interacts with the other technology around you. For example, if the tracker senses that your body temperature is dropping, it could raise the temperature on your thermostat to make you more comfortable. If it sensed your melatonin levels dropping, indicating sleepiness, it could dim the lights for you. The possibilities are endless with this type of technology.