Sister company Google is working on a medical smartwatch with an e-ink screen

Google’s sister company Verily is working on a medical smartwatch with an e-paper screen, the same kind of screen as in the watches of the American Pebble. The company does not want to sell the watches to consumers, but to use them for medical research.

It is a round watch with a screen of electronic ink, such as manufacturers of e-readers also use, reports MIT Technology Review. Verily has chosen such a screen because of the long battery life that is possible. It is intended that subjects in studies who wear watches for a long time and if it runs out quickly, that might hinder the collection of research results.

The prototype that the author saw had a bronze-colored case with the appearance of an analog watch. The screen only showed the time. The owner, a Verily employee with whom the author interviewed on a different topic, described the watch as a “heart and activity monitor.”

The watch can make heart films with the outer ring of the watch. The watch also seemed to have a heart rate monitor with two green LEDs, just like the Apple Watch. Four metal contacts were also found to be present. These are possible for charging the watch, or, for example, to measure sweat. The watch has no buttons.

Verily would like to use the watch for its Baseline study, in which it wants to constantly collect medical data from a group of ten to twenty thousand people over a longer period of time to see if there are ways to predict who based on measured data. whether or not you get sick.

The company, like Google part of Alphabet and a spin-off of Google’s X division for experimental projects, confirms the existence of the watch, but says it does not want to say anything more about it for the time being. Verily is not the only one working on such a watch. Philips recently announced the Health Watch, also with an electronic ink screen.