Internet of Things (IoT) & Your Health
(Photo credit Jawbone)
Wearable technologies combined with IoT in the kitchen can make a positive change in our overall health. According to Forbes, wearable technologies such as fitness bands and smart watches are gaining popularity with a wide variety of people, ranging from competitive athletes to those wanting to shed a few pounds. These devices are great for tracking our daily activity, heart rate, sleep patterns, calories burned, and overall health. Additionally, by constantly monitoring a person’s overall health the device can also recognize emergencies, such as heart attacks, before they occur.
Kitchens are getting smarter with a number of new IoT devices moving in. CNBC interviews Innit, about their cloud-based “kitchen platform” that integrates kitchen appliances in order to tell the user what to cook. They offer a refrigerator sensor that recognizes what items you have and the amounts of each. This information is shared with the oven where recipe options popup on a screen based on what ingredients you have available. Finally, once you have recipe selected, the oven will preheat and program itself for your meal.
Equinix reports on Prep Pad, a new smart food scale that tracks what users are eating (calories, protein and carbs) to provide the user a real-time insight into what they should be consuming in order to have a balanced diet or meet their personal nutritional goals. Prep Pad also links with the Jawbone UP fitness tracker to make recommendations based on the user’s activity level. By linking to the UP, the Prep Pad knows you’ve been exercising and can recommend the best foods and portions for your recovery. If Prep Pad was also linked to Innit, it could provide food recommendations based on what you already have available.
IoT and health is getting very interesting.
Links to these devices:
Jawbone UP
Prep Pad
Innit
sfschaible
Hello!
This PrepPad technology sounds fascinating and like something I need in my life! It’s amazing how the IoT and enchanted objects can play such a significant role in helping consumers become more aware of our health and the choices we make that impact it. I think this is a huge opportunity for marketers to leverage and important area of our lives that contributes to our overall quality of life. One thing that I do begin to develop concerns around is, will we develop an anxious society where we are over analyzing what we do, creating stress and worry. Some trends that demonstrate the possibilities here include, parents not vaccinating due to fear of other issues, body shaming, bullying, use of too many antibiotics, self-diagnosing through the Internet without a doctor’s consult and the like. From an ethical standpoint, what responsibilities do we have as marketers to protect our consumers from harmfully using or overloading them with health data and tools that the IoT and enchanted objects could deliver?
Thanks,
Sarah