“Many sensors available today look like bandages,” explains Jonathan Abarbanel, the lead designer on this project, in an interview with medGadget. “Through design, we wanted to visually message the wearable sensor’s capabilities: it’s not just a bandage; it’s a body-worn sensor with complex electronics that can provide real-time, continuous information about your vital signs.”

The sensor is expected to be available later this year and will be distributed under the Body Media (Pittsburgh, PA) brand.

The “life and activity” monitor, developed at Oregon State University, is wearable and non-invasive. The sensor does this via a 5-axis inertial measurement unit and a non-contact heart rate sensor that allow for ongoing and simultaneous monitoring of movement, heart rate, and respiration. Imagine adhering such a device to your pants instead of wearing yet another arm or wrist band that’s trying to resemble a watch.

The researchers, who reported on their emerging tech this week, say the next step is to continue to miniaturize a device that is already just two inches wide–ultimately taking the form of, say, a disposable bandage prescribed by a doctor for a few weeks of continuous monitoring.

Now Nike is launching a slick-new wristband called the Nike+ FuelBand. It can track your steps, calories burned, or time exercised – but also tracks a new metric called NikeFuel which is basically how much oxygen you’re consuming by performing a given task. In other words it doesn’t just monitor our fitness activity when you’re walking or running, but also when you’re sitting still, playing games on yoru Wii, or doing just about anything else.

The FuelBand has built-in LEDs that glow red or green to let you know when you’re reaching your fitness goals (or failing to do so). They can also display text or numbers to show your score, distance traveled, or the time.  You can pair the $149 FuelBand with an iPhone over Bluetooth to upload your data to the Nike+ app.

Researchers [Nick] spoke with for his column noted that it would be at least 10 years before Facebook updates were being flashed into our retinas in real time. In the interim, though, the first iteration of wearable computers are here, focusing on tracking people’s health.

“I think we are at the very beginning of wearable computing,” said Julia Hu, founder and chief executive of Lark, a start-up based in Mountain View, Calif., that makes a wearable sleep tracking monitor. “You’re starting to see a lot of sensors that track data and then visualize it.”  She added, “A big part of the first wave of wearables will be personalizing health and more importantly, making the information relevant for people.”  Ms. Hu’s company chose to focus on sleep better because, she said, more than 70 million Americans have a sleeping disorder.

Michael Liebhold, a senior researcher specializing in wearable computing at the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto, Calif., said in a phone interview that health applications made the most sense for today’s consumer-oriented wearables. Rather than offering health care, he said that new wearable devices were aimed at helping to promote wellness by helping people understand health issues before they became problems.

[...] But one wonders if people will actually wear these devices. Although health promoting and sleep monitoring devices may be useful and responsible, they aren’t exactly sexy products for mainstream consumers. And they won’t allow us to send Twitter messages from our eyeballs.

Wearable Technologies - On January 30, 2012, for the fifth time in a row, the Wearable Technologies Conference will take place in line with the International Sport Business Network (ISPO) Trade Show in Munich. This conference gives visitors the opportunity to discover groundbreaking innovations from the fields of health, fitness and prevention.

The conference will feature two areas of interest, namely the newest developments in the areas of “Sports & Consumers” and “Health & Fitness”. In addition to novel technologies in development, the 2012 WTconference will present products ready for the market. These days, technologies worn on or near the body are experiencing a real boom. The first WT products, those interesting to a wider market, are recording resounding successes. In addition, the many innovative technologies that have just reached the market stage have become all the more important to those manufacturers who can use the new technologies in a variety of their products. Tracks include: Sports and Prevention, Smartphone and Consumer Gadgets, Therapy and Innovation.

Exmobaby is a snap-on transmitter designed to measure critical vital signs in infants, including heart rate, skin temperature, moisture and movement. The data is transmitted at regular intervals to the parent’s computer, tablet and smartphone and is used to interpret the baby’s emotional states and behavior, transmitting alerts to parents and caregivers when their babies require attention or care.

The Exmobaby onesie is already available for sale. The onsie is safe, washable, rechargeable and transmits data via Zigbee up to 100 feet. It is based on patented technology from Sensatex and Georgia Tech.

The eButton’s reporting extends even further than food and exercise: It can determine the amount of time wearers spend watching TV or sitting in front of a computer screen and how much time they spend outdoors. It tracks where food is bought, how meals are prepared, which restaurants are visited, and what items are ordered.

Retrieving the results of eButton is convenient [...] it’s as easy as transferring pictures from a digital camera onto a computer. To protect participants’ privacy, the data are coded so they cannot be read until scanned by a computer to block human faces.

The 1.8 x 1.8 x 0.37 inches (46mm x 46mm x 9.6 mm) square MOTOACTV straps to the wrist or arm or can be mounted on a bike and sports a 1.6-inch full color touch screen that is sweat proof, rain and scratch resistant, and adapts to indoor and outdoor lighting. And it weighs in at a feathery 35grams.

The battery is specced at up to five hours for outdoor workouts, 10 for indoor and nearly two weeks on standby, while the device supports Bluetooth® 4.0 and ANT+ wireless connectivity.

What’s more, the team was able to demonstrate its invention across a wide range of components, including LEDs, transistors, wireless antennas, sensors, and conductive coils and solar cells for power. ”We threw everything in our bag of tricks onto that platform, and then added a few other new ideas on top of those to show that we could make it work,” said engineering professor John A. Rogers in a news release. The research is described in detail in the online journal, Science.

The range of medical applications includes EEG and EMG sensors to track nerves and muscles–something that tends to be limited to a lab given the number of electrodes and wires involved.

And the patch itself, mounted on a thin sheet of water-soluble plastic before being laminated to skin with water, can be applied not only like a temporary tattoo, but even on top of a temporary tattoo to help conceal it.

[...] On stage at TED Global, Jawbone announced the grand project they’ve been quietly working on for years: A wearable band called Up, which is infused with sensors and smartphone connected, allowing you to track your eating, sleeping, and activity patterns.

The interest grew when people realized how large this market is.

“The CDC says that for the first time in history, lifestyle diseases such as diabetes are killing more people than communicable diseases,” Travis Bogard, Jawbone’s VP of product management, tells Co.Design. “We’re trying to solve that problem.” The Up’s sensors collect data about how much you’ve been sleeping and how much you’ve been moving. That data is then fed into a smartphone app, which also takes in information about your meals. (You enter meal data manually, in part by taking pictures of what you’ve eaten.) Based on all that information, the smartphone program provides “nudges” meant to help you live healthier, day by day. For example, if you haven’t slept much, when you wake up the app might suggest a high-protein breakfast and an extra glass of water.