Daily healthtech pioneer Baracoda provided the general public with its first glimpse of BHeart, the world’s first health tracker with an “endless” battery. Integrated discreetly within bracelets and watch bands compatible with any classic timepiece, BHeart uses its patent pending BMotion energy harvesting technology to recharge itself entirely by motion, body heat and environmental light.
BHeart gathers sufficient energy to power a range of sensors that deliver health data to a smartphone app for iOS or Android devices. BHeart uses this captured energy to encourage a more active lifestyle by its wearer. Thanks to its advanced technology, BHeart was awarded a CES Innovation Award in the sustainability category.
BHeart is an example of the next generation of daily healthtech products, which Baracoda believes will increasingly center design on blending into existing objects, fashion and routines, making health technology more hassle-free and invisible. By contrast, today’s health trackers often require considerable user intervention, including frequent charging, manual updates and complicated data interpretation. The complexity can form barriers to adoption by those who don’t want another gadget to manage and seek more passive ways to keep tabs on their health or to share data with healthcare providers and caregivers.
“The first health trackers were important for establishing that wearable technology can encourage healthier lifestyles, but we must reach more than athletes to improve public health,” said Thomas Serval, CEO of Baracoda. “People of all ages and fitness levels need easier ways to track their health, so we must design products that fit into everyone’s lifestyles, including people who don’t find today’s technology accessible or easy to maintain.”
BHeart is designed to be subtly worn as a screenless watch band for an existing timepiece or as a bracelet. Despite its simplicity, its clever design hides complex sensors and energy collection technology. Baracoda’s AIoT platform transforms the data coming from multiple health sensors into actionable insights about users’ body energy, health status, mental resilience, activity level, and sleep quality.
BHeart’s smartphone app shares these insights and also provides simple, personalized advice, if needed, on the state of the user’s health in order to improve it daily. In addition to health indexes, users can see the energy they produce each day and over time, showing personal baselines and how behavior influences health, to encourage daily improvements.
BHeart is also created with sustainable principles in mind, including not only its energy-autonomous design but also the selection of plastic free materials used in its manufacturing. Sustainable leather and high-quality and lightweight alloys have been chosen for durability and its design for use with current classic watches further reduces the electronic waste associated with some smart watches’ short life cycles.
“Helping people become healthier shouldn’t demand they take on entirely new routines, and technology doesn’t have to be disposable to be low maintenance,” added Serval. “We can build tech that lasts to build habits that last. It just has to be designed to fit into our existing lifestyles.”
For the base model of the watch band, the material is lightweight metal, in silver, dark silver, or gold tones to match most classic watches. The extended product line will include a watch band or standalone bracelet made of sustainable leather to easily match any daily outfit.
BHeart is compatible with standard watches with a lug width of 18-22mm. The price of BHeart starts at $100 and will be available to purchase at bheart.io from April 2023. The BHeart app will be free to download from iOS App Store in April and Google Play Store in June 2023.
