We have been talking a lot about smartwatches recently, right? Today, we are going to focus on a unique kind of smartwatch; Embrace. It qualifies as a medical quality smartwatch that is capable of predicting epileptic seizures while measuring the patient’s activity level, stress and sleep.
The watch has been designed to improve epilepsy patients’ lives while offering style. The watch is the first of its kind and is aimed at the people who suffer from epilepsy. As per Institute of Medicine, every 1 out of 26 persons will be a patient of epilepsy at some point in their life. A total of 65 million people suffer from brain disorders in the world.
The gadget works in collaboration with the user’s smartphone to keep a track of physiological stress, physical activity and sleep while also informing people about the occurrence of any abnormal event, such as a convulsive seizure. Embrace can also send alerts to pre-selected family members or friends by making use of the system’s Empatica Alert app that works for both iOS and Android. The gadget also caters to a ‘companion’ Embrace, which can be worn by family or friends and when the two of them are in range, the companion device vibrates to inform the companion that the user might need help.
Embrace will also be launching an app, Empatica Mate, to be used by users to keep a record of their stress, sleep quality and physical activity. You can even set up different alerts, for instance, the gadget can be set to vibrate gently when your stress level starts to climb thus allowing you to take action before it shoots up. The watch works by tracking your movement and physiological signals to ascertain any potential situation involving life-threatening seizures. This is made possible through a number of sensors that are capable of gauging electro-dermal activity (EDA), skin conductance (arousal), activity (accelerometers) and temperature. The sensors along with the working algorithms were developed at the MIT Media Lab.
Embrace is water resistant and makes use of BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) while offering a USB port for charging purpose. It is a snap on design and takes help from a magnet to achieve the perfect fit. The device has been created by a computing company, Empatica, in collaboration with the Epilepsy Foundation and various private donors.
Funds are being raised on Indiegogo where pledging $189 will ensure that one piece is donated to a child with epilepsy, courtesy of Epilepsy Foundation. The fundraising campaign will end on 24th December 2014 and shipments will start in May, 2015.
