An array of gizmos and apps let users track daily activites, from eating to workouts.
Here are some popular wearable accessories:
* Fitbit Zip Wireless Activity Tracker: tracks steps, distance and calories burned. Consumers can set goals, track their progress and compete with friends. Also keeps a food log.
* Fitbit One Wireless Activity and Sleep Tracker: Like the Fitbit but also monitors how long and how well you sleep. Has a vibrating alarm to wake you up.
* Fitbit Aria WiFi Smart Scale: Records your weight and saves the information to a website. Consumers can use graphs to track their weight over time, allowing them to focus on long-term progress.
* Jawbone UP: tracks sleep activity, including time spent in light vs. deep sleep, as well as steps, distance and calories burned. Keeps a food log and also tells users how active they are during the day.
* MotoACTV Arm Band: Records workout data and lets users analyze results. Contains a GPS and MP3 player that creates a music playlist based upon performance data.
* CooKoo Watch: Let's consumers control and get notifications from their Smartphone, regardless of where the phone is. This includes notifications of incoming and missed calls, Facebook messages and when they've left their mobile device someplace.
And some apps:
* MyFitnessPal: tracks diet and exercise
* SleepCycle: a bio-alarm clock that analyzes sleep patterns and wakes consumers in the lightest sleep phase
* Baby Place: tracks baby's sleep schedules, diaper changes, bottle feeding, etc.
* Daily Burn: tracks body weight and other data, along with exercise and nutrition.
* Runkeeper: tracks distance, duration, speed and calories consumed.
Source: AT&T Mobility, Verizon Wireless
Edison Thomaz has a scale that sends his weight to a website so he can track it over time.
He wears a headband at night to monitor how well he sleeps. A third device tracks Thomaz’s glucose levels at the gym, giving him a better idea how exercising affects his health.
Welcome to the next trend made possible by mobile devices: quantifying yourself.
Gadgets and smartphone apps no longer just keep track of your schedule and bank account. Now they count the minutes you've slept, steps you've walked and calories you've burned. Soon they could help keep you in a good mood.
The self-quantification fad, which started with fitness fans tracking workouts, is creeping into the mainstream as new gizmos and apps offer ways to help people drive better, sleep better and just generally take better care of themselves.
As with all tech trends, there is a potential downside. There are concerns over privacy and whether users might substitute technology for, say, an annual checkup. The constant beeping devices, checking of numbers and monitoring updates can take the pleasure out of routine activities such as a daily jog around town, others say.
“There’s lots of good things. There’s lots of hype, there’s lots of crazy,” said Beth Mynatt, Georgia Tech’s executive director for the Institute for People and Technology.
The idea is to put consumers more in control of their health and behavior by marrying technology and data to track certain actions. Eventually, experts hope technology will evolve to the point that the devices are more forward looking, perhaps warning someone that he is likely to catch a cold because he’s only slept four hours a night for the past week and has consumed very little Vitamin C.
“It’s appearing in more things,” Mynatt said. “There’s this whole notion that people are getting used to all these weird sensors in the world.”
Mynatt can see results of constant tracking at work and at home. For example, Georgia Tech is researching how to expand the capabilities of sensors that help people manage their sleep. At home, the hybrid vehicle Mynatt’s husband drives gives instant feedback on his driving behavior, such whether he’s going too fast for the current road conditions.
“That’s where things start to work,” Mynatt said. “When it can be in real time, when people can get feedback about what they are doing. Then they can set some goals.”
The devices usually involve something that must be worn, and then connected to an app or website. Fitbit, a popular daily activity-monitoring device, can be stuffed in a pocket or hooked onto clothing. The Jawbone, another type of daily activity-tracking device, is a bracelet. Costs for these products range from $60 to more than $200, depending on model and features.
Both have apps and websites where consumers can log what they had to eat or drink to track nutritional information. Other apps, such as Runkeeper, are downloaded to a smartphone. Runkeeper uses a GPS to track distance. The app also tracks speed and duration during a run, and a voice periodically offers updates on progress.
Social media has played a strong role in the increased popularity of tracking. People can use Facebook and other sites to post the results of a daily run and engage in friendly competitions among co-workers, family members and others.
The explosion of smartphones and other mobile devices was a tipping point. The products are made by separate companies but need a broadband wireless network to collect and transmit data, especially to websites or smartphones.
Wireless companies such as Atlanta-based AT&T Mobility and Verizon Wireless sell wearable devices such as Fitbit and Jawbone, and their use makes customers ever more dependent on their phones or tablets.
“I think we are in a new era where the consumers are going to see, not just another smartphone, another piece of equipment, another piece of technology, but another solution,” said Ralph de la Vega, president and chief executive officer of AT&T Mobility.
Torrey Cardinalli, the Atlanta-area district manager for Verizon Wireless, said customers don’t usually come to a store seeking self-monitoring products. More often, they are there to buy a phone and ask about one because a friend uses it.
While young techies tend to be the “first adopters” for self-quantification apps, their development could be a boon to the home healthcare industry.
Wearable devices that record how much a person is walking around a home, whether someone is tripping or off-balance, can help alert doctors and family members to a possible health emergency.
Going forward, research and technology could lend themselves to devices that:
* help people with depression manage their mood by recording their pattern of “good” and “bad” days and sending notifications to take mood-improving steps such as interacting more with others.
* notify people with asthma to use maintenance medication.
* track when people usually eat and notify them of the closest, healthiest restaurants if they aren’t eating at that time.
Many of today’s devices evolved from academic research of the pre-smartphone era. Thad Starner, director of Georgia Tech’s contextual computing group, years ago helped create a digital audio device that played songs based upon someone’s heart rate and thermoactivity. The device, which he worked on while at MIT, may play fast, upbeat music when someone is at the gym based on historical data that showed the person burnt more calories when listening to that type of music, for example.
“It’s like having a dashboard for your car, but it’s for your body,” said Starner, who also works on Google’s “Project Glass” computerized glasses.
Eventually two editors at Wired magazine in California created a grassroots organization called the “quantified self” and started meeting. The idea expanded into other cities, including Atlanta, where about a dozen people gathered at the Cyprus Street Pint & Plate in Midtown Atlanta last Thursday night .
The hodgepodge of techies from various fields showed off new gadgets, talked about projects and discussed which “quantified self” devices they liked the best.
Chukwuma Onyeije, a doctor who specializes in treating women with high-risk pregnancies, frequently works with women who have gestational diabetes, which requires constant monitoring.
“Everybody has a smartphone, everybody can text, so can I use the technology they already have to better connect with them,” he said.
Onyeije said he’s been to the Atlanta group meetings twice since learning about the trend and related research online.
“It’s fascinating, all of the information out there,” he said.
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