Fitbit co-founder: The future of fitness is far beyond the wrist

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

Where are things still going? Will Fitbit ever venture out of the wrist? How can these disease trackers help as well COVID-19?

Fitbit co-founder and chief technical officer Eric Friedman provides some information about where Fitbit is now and where things are heading.

Decreasing the wrist sensors

Fitbit plans to further explore more advanced sensors on its larger watches, while allowing sensor technology to drain over time into more optimized, lower, lower-cost bands. “Because they have a bigger battery and kind of a bigger table, it’s easier to try new sensors and learn,” Friedman says of last year with sensors. Fitbit Sense – which added temperature, an electrodermal sensor that detects stress and an electrocardiogram or ECG – compared to the new much lower Fitbit Luxe, which relies mainly on its optical heart rate sensor for things like measuring sleep and stress.

Friedman compares it to where the heart rate was worn years ago, living mostly on long clocks, while the smaller bands measured only steps. The optical heart rate sensor is also the place where the greatest evolution has taken place, adding a lot of additional information based on algorithms that did not exist until now. “When we first launched the heart rate in our smartwatch, it was really a kind of training experience,” says Friedman of where things were seven years ago. “But as things progressed, we began to be able to eliminate more and more heart rate.”

He sees heart rate variability as a new and related metric, atrial fibrillation. Fitbit recently completed an AFib study of 500,000 people, but unlike the Apple Watch, most Fitbits do not measure atrial fibrillation estimated by the optical heart rate sensor. For this, you would need a Fitbit Sense with its ECG function.

Possibilities of blood pressure

Fitbit watches are not yet checking for blood pressure, but the company hopes a measurement called pulse arrival time could eventually be the answer to the wrists. The pulse arrival time, which can be measured via the Fitbit ECG-compatible Sense clock (but not yet available to Sense users), compares the electrical signal from the ECG to the blood flow measured via the heart rate optical sensor. Friedman sees this as a possible path to estimated road blood pressure measurements.

“Obviously, the ideal thing is to get absolute blood pressure, but even if we have a relative blood pressure and we say, ‘Hey, something has changed, you should look at it,’ and for me it would be a huge gain,” he says. Friedman. “If not relative blood pressure, something around heart health. There’s something out there, we just have to figure it out.” He says Fitbit’s progress in studying pulse arrival time is still in its infancy. “I did things internally, for friends and family. And recently we launched something in which we ask a lot of users to help us by collecting data, to see how we can generate a better signal and, finally, to help them, giving them additional value. “

There are few wearable items that measure blood pressure right now, except for physical swelling Omron HeartGuide, approved by the US Food and Drug Administration and the recent Samsung Galaxy Watch Active models (versions 2 and 3), which require calibration with a blood pressure cuff. It is a territory where many companies are still trying to crack.

Environmental and fitness calculation outside the wrist

Google’s acquisition of Fitbit certainly indicates a possible integration with a lot of other products, possibly even off-the-wrist devices, such as Nest Hub, which just added experimental sleep tracking using radar, but does not connect to Fitbit.

“We are in very early stages of integration, there is nothing to announce at this time,” says Friedman about Fitbit’s connections with the rest of the Google ecosystem. “But we’re really excited about what Google is bringing to the table in terms of AI technology.”

But environmental calculation, a vision of the future always connected an important focus for Google lately, could consider where Fitbit is heading. “I think the environmental calculation is really interesting, the detection of the environment,” says Friedman. “I think there are some things that will make sense for Fitbit to bring to market, there are some things that will make sense for Google plus Fitbit to bring to market.”

Friedman sees the Fitbit mobile app as the hub, in every sense. “There may be manifestations of these things on the wrist,” but this wrist-based technology is “not everything and the end.”

Portable as a disease alert (and COVID)

Despite being in a pandemic for more than a year, wearable technology has not necessarily become a useful indicator of the wrist for the symptoms of the disease that many have hoped for. But many companies, including Fitbit, are still working on extensive studies on the relationship between wrist indicators, such as heart rate variability and temperature, on the likelihood of illness.

Finding a way to put these findings in a Fitbit software update is a bigger challenge. Friedman says: “We are able to look at things like HRV (heart rate variability), SPO2 (blood oxygen), heart rate, sleep patterns, all of that. We are working to bring this to market, working with the FDA to adjust the sensitivity and specificity to find out which is the right thing depending on where the disease is today. “

Friedman sees this research as a door that helps us be aware of the symptoms of the disease in general, similar to what already exists on devices such as Oura ring, but is also worried about success. “Technology is not infallible,” says Friedman. “We are working with both the medical institution and the FDA to find out what is right for the health of the population.” Friedman also sees challenges in building trust between Fitbit and its data and doctors who will make their own assessments. In the field of health, it is a delicate transfer.

The future of Fitbit could be hyper-personalized

Friedman says the Fitbit Sense’s EDA stress sensor is the sensor he’s most excited about. But over the next 10 years, he sees the Fitbit platform continue to evolve as an increasingly customized tool.

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

Sleep tracking did not become interesting to Fitbit, according to Friedman, until it appeared that the information could be triggered. He notes that the pandemic has been detrimental to health in many ways, but that sleep has improved, leading to a lower average resting heart rate.

Finally, Friedman sees the possibility of a more personalized future in which guidance and guidance tools know how to treat people individually. “One of the things I underestimated when I started Fitbit was brain power,” he says of trying to find ways for people to listen to suggestions and not see them as judges. The approach may become more and more different depending on who uses the service.

“I think that’s where things will go in the next five to 10 years, the hyperpersonalization that causes that behavior to change. And obviously there are all sorts of other things to measure, both on and off the body that I think I’m really interesting. “

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