Tag Archives: Fitness

AI-powered rooms in malls and offices can give you a checkup without a doctor present

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Some of the hesitation in seeing a doctor regularly for checkups comes from embarrassment and fear, often because of people who are physically present during the consultation. The recent pandemic has made virtual consultations popular, but you still have to visit a clinic or hospital to actually perform tests like blood work or biometric scans. With today’s technologies, however, that shouldn’t even be necessary, at least for the most basic tests and diagnostics. Putting that theory into practice, this forward-looking cubical room combines advanced tools and everyone’s favorite special sauce, AI, to offer a “self-serve” clinic that can be set up almost anywhere so that people can have easier and less stressful access to healthcare.

Designer: Forward

We’re all advised to get regular checkups, especially when we start to feel something’s amiss. Unfortunately, access to healthcare services isn’t always easy or convenient. Clinics might be far away or doctors might have very long waiting times. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could just walk into a room, use a few gadgets and gizmos, receive a quick diagnosis of your health, and maybe even get a legit prescription, all without even having to even physically meet with the physician? That’s the kind of quick and stress-free experience that the Forward CarePod is promising as the world’s first “AI Doctor’s Office.”

CarePod puts you in the driver’s seat of your health, almost literally considering the comfy chair inside the single-person room. You walk inside, answer a few tests to determine the kind of clinical test that needs to be done, and you use the provided tools to perform those tests, like drawing blood, swabbing your throat, taking your blood pressure, and the like. These are frontline clinical diagnostics that most nurses and doctors perform but can now also be done by yourself with the right tools, which means there will be no doctors or nurses inside CarePods. At least not human ones.

Of course, it isn’t enough to just get your diagnostic results. You’ll need a professional to interpret those results for you, which is also the job of physicians. With the CarePod system, however, that diagnosis is made by a proprietary AI that has learned from clinical expertise and the latest medical research. In addition to providing a diagnosis, that AI also formulates care plans called “Health Apps” that will guide the patient with programs and advice to address various diseases and disorders, including diabetes, hypertension, and even depression. CarePod doesn’t eliminate human doctors from the equation completely, as they are still needed for writing prescriptions or more in-depth consultations.

Impressive as all these technologies may sound, the most important aspect of CarePod is probably the fact that it can be installed almost anywhere. It is already being deployed in malls, gyms, and offices, places where clinical services are often unavailable, but it’s not hard to imagine these rooms being installed in every street corner in the future. This would give people access to healthcare that would otherwise be out of reach, which increases their chances of living healthier and longer lives.

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This modular bracelet concept lets you choose how smart you want your jewelry to be

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The popularity of the Apple Watch has finally given smartwatches their place in the market, making them understandable and even desirable. Of course, that doesn’t mean that everyone now wants a smartwatch, especially those who prefer mechanical watches or have different aesthetic tastes. Unfortunately, the majority of wrist-worn smart trackers seem to be made with sporty and rugged designs in mind. Given hardware requirements, that’s not exactly surprising, but that shouldn’t stop designers from imagining what’s possible. One such dream is reflected in this minimalist yet distinctive bracelet that throws all smart wearable design conventions out the window, offering a modular piece of jewelry that is smart in more ways than one.

Designers: Akasaki Vanhuyse, Astrid Vanhuyse

If you remove the actual time-keeping function of a smartwatch or a fitness tracker, all you’re really left with are the sensors that actually do the work of keeping tabs on different metrics of your health, directly or indirectly. A display isn’t even necessary since you can always check those figures on a smartphone. In fact, a display might even be detrimental because of the distractions it pushes your way or how it clashes with some fashion styles. Smartwatch designs are primarily constricted by hardware such as displays and big batteries, but what if you could be free of those restrictions?

That’s what the BEAD concept seems to be proposing, offering the same health and wellness monitoring functionalities but in a form that is a bit more universal and, at the same time, more personal. At the heart of the design are the beads, actually tiny cylinders that each hide a single sensor used to track a specific biometric like a pulse oximeter or an accelerometer. Each bead is an independent unit, free from displays or large batteries, performing a single task and performing it to perfection.

The idea is that you can combine any number of these beads on a string or wire to achieve the same collective effect as a fitness tracker. You wear it around your wrist like a bracelet, held together at the ends by magnets in the shape of half-spheres. The wire is white, plain, and unadorned, which puts a bigger visual focus on the beads. Those beads themselves carry a brushed metal finish that helps hide whatever scratches they may incur over time while also giving them unique characters.

You can add or remove as many of these modular beads as you need, only paying for the functionality you actually use. It also makes repairing broken beads easier, since you only need to replace that single piece. Admittedly, the industrial aesthetic might not appeal to everyone’s tastes, but the concept opens the possibility of using different, perhaps more stylish designs that will truly create a fusion of fashion and technology in a simple smart bracelet.

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