By the Skin of Your…
Smart stuff is the new digital paradigm. Smart cars, smart homes, smart appliances, and smartphones pervade our lives and collect endless amounts of data that is there to make your life (supposedly) better. There are lots of smart things that really do help, especially in manufacturing, where smart tools sense when they need maintenance and smart visualizing systems can stop production when it senses a misaligned product is going to cause a problem down the line, but much of the ‘smartness’ we see on a daily basis provides only minimal help to our daily lives. Yes, it is good that your refrigerator can tell you that your milk is two days from expiration or that your washing machine is leaking, but most smart products have little incremental value other than allowing you to sit on the couch longer than necessary.
That said, we came across a very unusual ‘smart’ item in our research on wearables. This ‘smart’ category is an unusual one in that it is called smart textiles, a category that can include some medical devices such as active bandages that monitor cell growth in patients with wound issues. But we fear that the ‘smartness’ in this particular application might be a bit unusual to say the least. In the case of biometric sensors, they usually need to be in close and constant contact with the skin to register bodily metrics, and a number of companies have decided that the best place to put such smart textiles is a place that is not close to your heart, but close to ‘other’ parts, and thus the ‘smart underwear’ industry was born.
While companies in the consumer biometric monitoring space using smart textiles have been around for a bit, and include LIfeVest (Asahi Kasei (3407.JP)), a wearable defibrillator shirt and a knee brace that provides electrical stimulation and heat, a Canadian company, Myant (pvt) company also produces Skiin™ garments that feed data back to an app about your wellbeing. Currently undergoing clinical trials their smart underwear that can continuously measure electrocardiography, stress levels, sleep quality, activity, temperature and other metrics, all through your underwear, although current products monitor and adjust only body temperature. While this can be helpful for those that might be prone to random cardio events, the promotional literature for some of these products can wax a bit strange, citing “imagine a pair of pants that can play your party playlist when you get sad,” or wake you up if it senses driver fatigue (not sure how that works!), but in any case, consumer applications like these are a bit less helpful than a-fib detection or similar biometrics despite their potential appeal to those interested in being their own helicopter parents. OK it’s a brand new world out there and we might be feeling a bit out of date when it comes to underwear, but perhaps there is a better way to promote the product…
That said, we came across a very unusual ‘smart’ item in our research on wearables. This ‘smart’ category is an unusual one in that it is called smart textiles, a category that can include some medical devices such as active bandages that monitor cell growth in patients with wound issues. But we fear that the ‘smartness’ in this particular application might be a bit unusual to say the least. In the case of biometric sensors, they usually need to be in close and constant contact with the skin to register bodily metrics, and a number of companies have decided that the best place to put such smart textiles is a place that is not close to your heart, but close to ‘other’ parts, and thus the ‘smart underwear’ industry was born.
While companies in the consumer biometric monitoring space using smart textiles have been around for a bit, and include LIfeVest (Asahi Kasei (3407.JP)), a wearable defibrillator shirt and a knee brace that provides electrical stimulation and heat, a Canadian company, Myant (pvt) company also produces Skiin™ garments that feed data back to an app about your wellbeing. Currently undergoing clinical trials their smart underwear that can continuously measure electrocardiography, stress levels, sleep quality, activity, temperature and other metrics, all through your underwear, although current products monitor and adjust only body temperature. While this can be helpful for those that might be prone to random cardio events, the promotional literature for some of these products can wax a bit strange, citing “imagine a pair of pants that can play your party playlist when you get sad,” or wake you up if it senses driver fatigue (not sure how that works!), but in any case, consumer applications like these are a bit less helpful than a-fib detection or similar biometrics despite their potential appeal to those interested in being their own helicopter parents. OK it’s a brand new world out there and we might be feeling a bit out of date when it comes to underwear, but perhaps there is a better way to promote the product…
The Baseline Collection - Source: Skiin
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