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expenditure) or in their own right, depending on the particular application. For
example these classifications can be used to automatically record a person's ac-
tivities during a day - in other words, auto-journaling. Another application is
simply to record the amount of exercise or rest that a person undertakes in the
course of wearing the armband.
Future Sensors. While not available as commercial products in 2004, there
are additional applications and capabilities that make sense for the SenseWear
platform.
Heart rate is a prime physiological indicator and an active area of research
and development at BodyMedia with a goal of recording heart rate as comfort-
ably and as unobtrusively as the SenseWear armband measures sleep, activity,
and energy expenditure. Other areas of research and development include al-
gorithm and software support for diabetes management, hydration monitoring,
and sleep. All these are applicable for monitoring in the home and free-living
environments rather than in the clinic.
3.3 System Embodiments
The SenseWear armband is currently commercially deployed in three different
packages: research, weight management, and fitness.
The research and clinical system is a stand-alone system comprised of arm-
bands and research software. The software allows for the initialization, sampling
rate configuration, data retrieval, and viewing of collected data from the arm-
bands. The research software gives the user a great deal of control over their
armband and the collected data compared to the other applications. The raw
data, and many of the derived measures such as sleep and energy expenditure are
exportable as Microsoft Excel or comma separated value files for further analy-
sis. HealthWear is the brand name of the clinical weight management package
available from Roche. This combines the armband with a web site-based tracking
system designed to be used in the context of a clinical setting, allowing individ-
uals to monitor their progress from home PCs. The Apex Club Based Weight
Manager is a managed fitness system available from the Apex Fitness Group
that combines the armband with a personal training regimen and a web site-
based meal and exercise planning and tracking system. Both these systems are
now described in more detail.
4 Roche HealthWear
“The percent of persons who are overweight or obese (BMI of 25 or
higher) increased from 56% in 1988 to 64% in 1999-2000 [23].”.
“With obesity on the rise, we can expect a sharp increase in diabetes rates
to continue. Unless these dangerous trends are halted, the impact on our
nation's health and medical care costs will be overwhelming.” Jeffrey P.
Koplan, MD. Director, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
1998-2002 [12].
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