Monitoring health, wellness and fitness via wearable devices: Key Neurotech Patent #29

– Illus­tra­tive image from US Patent No. 7,261,690.

Today we are shar­ing a fas­ci­nat­ing 2007 patent assigned to Body­media. (As men­tioned, we are fea­tur­ing a foun­da­tion­al Per­va­sive Neu­rotech patent a day, from old­er to new­er by issue date)

U.S. Patent No. 7,261,690: Appa­ra­tus for mon­i­tor­ing health, well­ness and fitness.

• Assignee(s): Body­media, Inc.
• Inventor(s): Eric Teller, John M. Stivoric, Christo­pher D. Kasabach, Christo­pher D. Pacione, John
• L. Moss, Craig B. Liden
• Tech­nol­o­gy Cat­e­go­ry: Neuro-monitoring
• Issue Date: August 28, 2007

SharpBrains’ Take:

The ‘690 patent dis­clos­es an appa­ra­tus for mon­i­tor­ing human health and well­ness, includ­ing men­tal health ele­ments, through a wear­able device with phys­i­o­log­i­cal and con­tex­tu­al (envi­ron­men­tal) sen­sors. Soft­ware derives caloric expen­di­ture data from these sen­sors, which may be dis­played along with phys­i­o­log­i­cal and envi­ron­men­tal data to the user in phys­i­cal and men­tal appli­ca­tions, as shown in the illus­tra­tive image above. The inde­pen­dent claim ele­ment deriv­ing “caloric expen­di­ture” may present a design around for com­pet­i­tive prod­ucts seek­ing to offer sim­i­lar val­ue propo­si­tions in the quan­ti­fied-self fit­ness space. Nev­er­the­less, the com­bi­na­tion of wear­able sen­sor data with men­tal well­ness soft­ware, along with the sig­nif­i­cant for­ward cita­tions, large num­ber of claims (146) and exten­sive spec­i­fi­ca­tion (includ­ing 17 pages of writ­ten mate­r­i­al and 18 illus­tra­tion sheets) were among the fac­tors that con­tributed to deem­ing the ‘690 patent as a key non-inva­sive neu­rotech­nol­o­gy patent.

Abstract:

A detect­ing, mon­i­tor­ing and report­ing appa­ra­tus includes at least two sen­sors for facil­i­tat­ing the gen­er­a­tion of data indica­tive of phys­i­o­log­i­cal para­me­ters of the indi­vid­ual and/or data indica­tive of a con­tex­tu­al para­me­ters of the indi­vid­ual. A proces­sor is cou­pled to the sen­sors and is adapt­ed to gen­er­ate at least one of derived data from at least a por­tion of the data indica­tive of phys­i­o­log­i­cal para­me­ters and ana­lyt­i­cal sta­tus data from at least a por­tion of at least one of the data indica­tive of phys­i­o­log­i­cal para­me­ters, the data indica­tive of con­tex­tu­al para­me­ters, the derived data and the ana­lyt­i­cal sta­tus data. A mem­o­ry retriev­ably stores the data and one of var­i­ous ways of trans­mit­ting the data is provided.

Illus­tra­tive Claim 32. An appa­ra­tus for detect­ing, mon­i­tor­ing and report­ing human sta­tus infor­ma­tion, com­pris­ing a sen­sor device including:

• at least two sen­sors select­ed from the group con­sist­ing of phys­i­o­log­i­cal sen­sors and con­tex­tu­al sen­sors, said sen­sors gen­er­at­ing data of a first para­me­ter and a sec­ond para­me­ter of an indi­vid­ual and said sen­sors gen­er­at­ing data dur­ing non-seden­tary activ­i­ties, where­in said first and sec­ond para­me­ters are pro­duced by at least one of said indi­vid­u­al’s body and the envi­ron­ment adja­cent to said indi­vid­u­al’s body; and
• at least one of a com­put­ing device and a proces­sor in elec­tron­ic com­mu­ni­ca­tion with said sen­sor device, said at least one of a com­put­ing device and proces­sor gen­er­at­ing derived data based on said data of a first para­me­ter and a sec­ond para­me­ter, said derived data com­pris­ing a third para­me­ter of said indi­vid­ual, said third para­me­ter being an indi­vid­ual sta­tus para­me­ter that can­not be direct­ly detect­ed by any of said at least two sen­sors and said third para­me­ter com­pris­es caloric expen­di­ture data.

To learn more about mar­ket data, trends and lead­ing com­pa­nies in the dig­i­tal brain health space –dig­i­tal plat­forms for brain/ cog­ni­tive assess­ment, mon­i­tor­ing and enhance­ment– check out this mar­ket report. To learn more about our analy­sis of 10,000+ patent fil­ings, check out this IP & inno­va­tion neu­rotech report.