As the year is coming to an end, it’s time look the most interesting health gadgets for 2021. I have chosen gadgets that bring something new to the table. Most likely I’m going to buy all of them. I have no affiliation to the companies that produces these gadgets.
Table of Contents
1. Bisu - Smart urine analyzer
I most likely got your attention already – So, what is this strange looking device and what has it do with urine? I heard about this first time in biohacking confrence 2019. 2 years before that I was introduced to Oura in same confrence, now everyone knows Oura. I felt in the confrence 2019 that Bisu could be “next Oura”.
Bisu is very simple to use – Process starts with test stick which needs few drops of urine, then its placed on the reader which sends result on the phone. Following biomarkers are analyzed in Bisu:
What can you learn from these biomarkers? Let’s look at them one by one:
Electrolytes
Electrolytes are group of minerals that have important role on making sure that nerves, muscles, heart and brain works properly. Train vigorously or have a long sauna session and you lose sodium, magnesium, potassium and calcium. What you want to avoid is imbalance of electrolytes, common symptoms include: fatigue, nausea and muscle weaknesses.
For me this is very interesting biomarker, as I exercise and use sauna frequently. Electrolytes also tell us about our diet and drinking habits. Am I getting enough electrolytes from food and am I drinking right amount of water? This should be extra interesting biomarker for all long distance runners [1].
Hydration
Similar to electrolytes, hydration is important biomarker to measure. I’m especially interested to make sure I am hydrated before I go to bed, so during sleeping my body gets rid of unwanted toxins [2]. One study found out association between poor sleep and dehydration [3].
Ketones
I haven’t tried ketogenic diet, but if I will, this will be crucial biomarker to measure. Ketones are made in liver and they are used as energy instead of glucose.
pH
pH means level of acid in Urine. Bisu webpage summarizes it well why this biomarker matters: “In the short term, an acidic diet creates a sub-optimal environment for muscle retention and growth, bone strength and exercise performance. In the long term, an acidic diet accelerates the decline of kidney function.” [4]
Uric acid
This biomarker can reveal if diet has too much compound called “purine”. Excess purine can cause different health problems like kidney stones and gout. [5] Other commonly associated conditions with high uric acid are obesity, alcoholism, vitamin D deficiency and some rare genetic mutations [6].
Bisu Body Coach (Mobile app)
Bisu Body Coach gives tailored advice based on profile, goals and results. Based on screenshots, Bisu Body Coach will also offer educational content in forms of podcast, articles and videos. Mobile app experience and user friendliness is a big part of customer experience. Hopefully they can achieve the same level Oura have achieved in their app.
Price: Around 110 dollars + 20-30 dollars per month with test sticks
Product launch: 2021 (Beta testing starting soon)
Additional information: https://www.bisu.bio/ & Promo video
2. Amazon Halo - Wrist band with new features
It’s always interesting when corporate giants venture into new product segments. So, what we have here? Amazon Halo is a wrist band with five different core features. Health wrist band itself isn’t anything new as Polar, Garmin and Fitbit have their own products. Let’s look Amazon Halo features and if it brings anything new to the table:
Activity
Gold standard measurement of fitness trackers. According to Amazon, Halo deducts one activity point for every hour over eight hours of sedentary time in a day, outside of sleep [7]. No Wow effects here.
Sleep
Key question is, how accurate is Halo in terms of sleep accuracy. As new study showed, there are high degree of variability in the sleep accuracy of different devices [8]. Halo measures different sleep stages, motion, heart rate and skin temperature. Nothing new here either. If you are still reading, now it will get more interesting:
Body
Now you can get interesting data from your underwear selfie material: take pictures of your body (front, both sides and back). Amazon Halo will then make personalized 3D view of your body with body fat percentage. This is based on computer vision and machine learning. Amazon boldly states that body fat measurement is as accurate as methods a doctor would use and nearly twice as accurate as leading at-home smart scales. Accuracy should also even improve over time as its based on machine learning.
Tone
Tone feature brings new level to the game. Tone analyzes your voice: are you happy, sad, excited or tired? If you are OK with big brother listening, tone runes passively in the background and throughout the day analyzes short samples of your speech. Then end of the day you will see summary:
You can also use Tone for situations where you want to make sure you sound happy and energetic. That could be family time after office day or you can practice job interview.
Labs
Last feature combines science-backed challenges, experiments and workouts into interactive archive. Content is created either by Amazon Halo experts or known brands and personalities around the world. Hopefully Labs isn’t just generic library for content. Instead, you could do experiments and see correlations with other Halo data points.
Price: 99 dollars incl. six month trial for Amazon halo service. After that trial cost 3,99$ per month.
Product launch: Early access in U.S, official product launch in 2021
Additional information: Amazon press release on Halo
3. Somnofy - Non-contact sleep monitor
This may look like typical modern alarm clock but its far from it. Somnofy is non-contact sleep monitor with two different areas to measure: personal measures & bedroom analysis.
Personal measures
Personal measures includes sleep quality, body movement, respiration rate and sleep stages. All of these are standard features in smart watches and Oura ring. What matters however is data quality: Somnofy was assessed against PSG with excellent results, Deep sleep was overestimated by 4 minutes and REM sleep by 3 minutes [9]. In comparison, first version of Oura ring underestimated deep sleep 20 minutes and overestimated REM sleep 17 minutes [10]. How is it possible that non-contact sleep monitor is almost as accurate as PSG where you are strapped in all kind of wires? Somnofy uses high-tech sensors and machine learning. They have done tremendous work to make it so accurate.
Bedroom analysis
Bedroom analysis includes air quality, noise, temperature, light intensity and -spectrum. All very important factors for quality sleep. You can measure these metrics with other devices too, but for my understanding this is the first time when actual sleep metrics are combined with bedroom factors.
Somnofy app
Sleep data and bedroom factors are combined in Somnofy app. If this is done right, this could be best tool to analyse sleep and how different factors affect sleep. I had brief chat with their CTO, there will be continuous development on app and user experience. Currently they are working on personal sleep profile which analyses correlations between different metrics, so end user understands better what kind of impact example room temperature have on sleep quality. Other upcoming features include airplane mode on device and self reporting. If self reporting is done right, Somnofy app could cover 360 degree of sleep factors (example meal or exercise timing). I am very excited to see where it leads. It is important to mention that similar to Amazon Halo, Somnofy has monthly fee for premium features (guided breathing, smart alarm and data sync with Google fit and Strava).
In future, perhaps Somnofy is my main device for sleep tracking. Simultaneously, I would still use Oura for recovery metrics like heart rate variability, heart rate and body temperature.
Price: Around 200 dollars for early birds with 3 months premium trial included.
Product launch: Currently available in U.S and Norwegian markets, other European countries by demand.
Additional information: Official Somnofy webpage
This Post Has 2 Comments
Very interesting each of them, and very accessible price-wise. It seems like machine-learning could be pretty ground-breaking in terms of health-monitoring.
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