Samsung starts selling wearables chip for health and well-being

Samsung probably isn’t the first name that comes to mind when you think of personal health technology, but the company appears to be making strides in that direction.

Samsung has told the world that it will start selling a new chip aimed at health focused wearable products.

Samsung officially announced the news on its website, with the Marketing VP for System LSI business, Ben K. Hur, acknowledging health conscious customers who drive the fitness market.

But as well as being able to monitor five different bio-signals, the chip can also handle their processing internally, without recourse to another device. The integrated design’s most incredible feature is the size of the Bio-Processor. Samsung went on to explain, “When compared to the total area of the discrete parts, the Bio-Processor is only about one fourth of the total combined size, which is ideal for small wearable devices, offering a bounty of options when designing new devices”. The AFE can measure everything from body fat and skeletal muscle mass to heart rate, heart rhythm, skin temperature and stress level. It will enable such devices to do more than just the standard heart rate monitoring we see these days – the bio processor will provide the ability to track bioelectrical impedance, measure skin temperature and even perform electrocardiograms.

The Bio-Processor both digitizes and stores health information, combining functions that previously required separate chips.

The current state of fitness monitoring in wearables is rather limited to steps and heart rate. In addition, while smartwatches have generated attention, thanks to new devices from the likes of Apple, Motorola, Pebble and Samsung, it doesn’t yet seem to have affected the demand for fitness trackers, the analysts said.

To speed product development, several wearable reference platforms are now available to demonstrate various use cases, Samsung noted. Already available are examples of a wrist band, board and patch type reference device.