The Smart Health Series With SiliconANGLE

This week’s Smart Health roundup features the findings of a survey regarding the use of health trackers as it pertains to insurance rantes, a wearable device that automatically manages your body, and a rumored health tracker that’s compatible with various mobile platforms.

75 percent of adults do not own or use health trackers

TechnologyAdvice LLC conducted a survey last month involving over 900 U.S. adults to gain insight on their general fitness tracking habits, with 419 adults being surveyed on their specific reasons for not using tracking devices or apps.

The survey showed that 74.9 percent of respondents do not a fitness tracker or smartphone app to track their health, weight, or exercise. Lack of interest was the top deferment at 27.2 percent, with concerns over cost curbing 17.7 percent, comprising the most common reasons for not using such technology.

Of those presently not using health trackers, 48.2 percent are willing to use one if their physician prescribed it, while 57.1 stated that they would use one if it would lower the cost of health insurance premiums. Another 44.2 percent stated that getting better healthcare advice from their physicians would be an incentive to use wearable health trackers.

GoBe yourself and forget about tracking

Healbe Corp. has designed a wearable device that takes out the guesswork in determining a person’s real-time health status. Called the GoBe Automatic Body Manager, the tracker automatically gathers data from a person’s skin such as caloric intake, via the company’s FLOW technology, without the manual input of the user. GoBe uses a continuous piezo pressure sensor to monitor heart rates for a complete and accurate picture of a user’s activity and daily exertion level, and combines accelerometer data with continuous heart rate monitoring to precisely calculate calories burned and metabolic rates during any activity—jogging, swimming, cycling, weight training, and more.

The device itself is able to show time, calorie intake, calories burned, hydration levels, heart rate, blood pressure, stress level and even distance traveled. Though the information is immediately available on your wrist, you can use a smartphone app for a comprehensive view of your long term data.

GoBe is priced as $299 until November 2014 and will come with two free wristbands. And if you’re from the U.S., shipping is included in the sale price.

A fitness band that doesn’t care what smartphone you use

The rumors are true. Lenovo Group Ltd. is working on a fitness band to better compete with Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and other brands that have already released smartwatches or fitness bands. Appearing before the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for approval, the Lenovo SmartBand should be just about ready to launch.

The SmartBand is a fitness tracker that connects to a smartphone via Bluetooth. Reports stated that since since it will be using a Bluetooth connection, the device will be compatible for use with smartphones running Android, iOS and even Windows Phone. It has a small display where a user can see the time, fitness stats as well as notifications from apps on the user’s smartphone.

Documents from the FCC states that the Lenovo SmartBand is IP67 certified, which means it is water and dust resistant, and a full charge lasts up to seven days of use.

No news yet as to how much the device will cost and when it will be available for consumers.