PREMIUM - The Future Of Wearable Sensors

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Hey folks, it's Ben Greenfield. And I know that the world of wearables, these devices that self quantify everything from your heart rate to your heart rate variability, to your respiration to your perspiration and more, they can be a little bit confusing. I know that an entire section of the Consumer Electronics show was devoted just to the huge number of emerging wearables that are out there on the market. And I thought it would be interesting today to delve into one of the latest wearables made by a company called Echo Labs, just to kind of learn a little bit more about how these things are made, their accuracy, and also some of the unique elements that this Echo Labs wearable in particular measures. So my guest today is Pierre Jean, who's the co founder of Echo Labs and he's a guy who definitely knows wearables. So Pierre, how's it going?

Good, thanks for having me.

So my first question for you is, are you measuring anything right now at this moment, while we're talking, are you a self quantification guy?

I'm actually not. Right now at this minute, I've obviously tried. Pretty much everything that's on the market, have been left pretty unsatisfied and in a way that's why we started this company. And as we speak, we're actually having 100 units in production of our latest prototype, which is basically going to be our first consumer grade product.

Okay, got it. Now how did you actually get into this? Is this something that you studied in school? Were you like an engineer or something like that?

No, I mean, it's actually sort of at the intersection of many different things. So I met my co founder a lot at Stanford Business School. He is an engineer with a lot of experience developing pretty impressive technologies. And so he'd been working for a while on non invasive blood measurement techniques. So basically using light to look at different components of the blood. And so when we met, so this was back in 2012, it was sort of the early days of wearable tech. We started to see Fitbits and jawbones on people's risks and we thought that was really interesting from a conceptual point of view. What I mean by that is before that there was no way for you to have this data about you at the touch of your fingertips. And we thought, this is really quite interesting, this sort of new interaction between technology and humans. Now when we tried them, we realized, you know, this is not actually very useful. There's not a lot of interesting insights that come out of measuring a certain amount of steps that you take every day. And so we thought about it and we thought, you know, the concept's still good, but we need to do something that's a little bit more interesting. And when we talk about it, the idea that there is no insight comes from the fact that actually the data, the base data that is being measured is just not that interesting. And so we came back to some of Elaz Prior work in technology and we decided, well, if we could measure what goes on inside the body as opposed to something that's external, like steps, then we could really start to give user something that is truly useful, because then we can really observe what is the impact on your physiology of everything you do. And that's activity, but it's also stress and hydration, nutrition, sleep, and so on and so forth. That's what we've been building.

Got it. Now it looks like, basically, I'm at your website right now. And by the way, for those of you listening in, I'll put links to everything that Pierre and I talk about over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com EchoLabs, that's Echo Labs. I'm at your website. And it looks like this little wearable device. It's kind of built like a watch almost. And you have four things on the site that you say that it measures. And the first is fuel. And I'm curious what you mean by that. Is this thing actually measuring like blood glucose or something like that?

No, not exactly. I mean, it's. So we're able, because we use this light to look at your bloodstream and we do this continuous analysis of the composition of your blood. What we're able to see is basically what type of energy you're burning and how fast you're burning that energy. Looking at a proxy of respiratory exchange rates rer. And so with enough data, we think we can actually understand how far you are from hitting basically an empty tank. So that's sort of the image that we usually use.

You said that it's measuring the blood. Now, what do you mean by that?

So we use a technology called spectrometry, and in essence, it uses light at different, very specific frequencies that we pulse through the skin and into the tissue. And the veins and the arteries, and we basically analyze the reflection. And so when we do that, we're able to observe different molecules, and we're able to understand basically what the concentration of that molecule is. It's something that's been used in sort of very specific uses in hospital and in research and in physics and chemistry, but it's never been used in a wearable form. And so, yeah, that's sort of the basics of our technology.

Yeah. Well, most wearables will do things like detect how fast you're moving or the beat of your heart rate, but this is the first time that I've actually spoken with someone about something that can measure what's in your blood. So when you say that it uses spectrometry, can you explain what that means?

It's basically every element in nature in the body responds to a very specific light signature, so a light frequency. And you can think of it as, you know, when you're wearing a blue shirt. Well, we see that your shirt is blue because it actually captures the blue elements of the light and it reflects everything else. Right. So here it works in a very similar way, meaning that every single molecule, from the biggest ones, like oxygen, to the smallest one, like glucose or nutrients, have a very, very specific light signature. And so if you're able to pulse light at that very specific frequency and then analyze it when it comes back, then you can understand basically if that molecule is even there and if it is, in basically what amounts.

Got it. Okay, so back to my question for you. When we were talking about fuel, what molecule is. When this thing is measuring fuel, what molecule is actually being measured?

Yeah, so I'm sure you've done plenty of VO2 max tests where basically you have a gas chamber that analyzes the oxygen that comes in and the CO2 that comes out. So we do something very, very similar, except that we look at it in the blood. So it's a little bit different, but it works in a very similar way. Or anyway, it's sort of close enough to give you a pretty good idea of what's actually happening.

Okay, gotcha. So can it measure things like fat versus carb utilization or something like that?

Right, okay.

Interesting, interesting. All right, so this spectrometer, where is it located? When I'm looking at the device online, it appears to be something close to the wrist.

Yes. Yeah. So, I mean, technically, you could put it anywhere. You could put it inside your ear, you could put it in front of your eye, but obviously that wouldn't be very comfortable. And so it Actually sits on the wrist because that is a place on the body where people are used to wearing devices. And it does the analysis on the inside of the wrist, so not where the watch face is, but just the opposite side.

Okay, gotcha. So it's measuring fuel utilization. And where is that being shown? Is there like a dashboard or an interface? And if so, what is it showing you with relation to fuel? Like, what's the actual quantified data that I'd be seeing?

So there's sort of two use cases for that. One is when you're in practice, when you're training, or when you're in a competition. And so in that case, the idea is it will show it to you directly on the watch face, but very easy to access. And so what will happen, say you're running a marathon, it will do the analysis continuously and it will keep on observing how your physiology and your metabolism are changing. And then it will buzz and it will alert you when something is wrong. For instance, it will tell you, ben, if you keep going at this pace, within half an hour, you're basically going to have an empty tank. So now is the time for you to eat. So it gives you these very quick, simple notifications on the watch to tell you what to do.

So it will basically detect my fuel utilization and then predict, I assume, based on my weight or my anticipated glycogen stores, how quickly I'd be burning through my carb stores based on my current fuel utilization. Very interesting. Now, how does it, just being kind of the devil's advocate here, how does it take into account whether someone is like a better fat burner or a better carb burner, whether someone is sparing glycogen? Is that based off the spectrometry analysis of the actual molecules being generated when someone burns fat versus when someone burns carbs?

Yeah, for the most part. But the interesting part of this device is ideally, it's something that you'll wear most of the time and even ideally 24 7, because the more data it's able to store and analyze, the more accurate it's going to get. And so because of that, then, you know, as you start worrying it for the first few days, the first week, the first few weeks, then it really starts to know you and your own physiology. That is, you know, yours is different from mine, is different from my co founder. And as it learns and keeps on learning, then it gets more and more accurate.

Now, let's say that someone was trying to analyze whether they were becoming more efficient at fat burning. Would this wearable, be able to give them information regarding that.

It's not something that we've really thought about, but yeah, I don't see why not.

And that would be based off the fact that spectrometer that's on the watch would detect levels of different molecules as a byproduct of fat metabolism versus carb metabolism.

Right. And that's what's really fascinating about this type of science, is that in a way, the applications are almost infinite.

Yeah, it's really interesting. I'm actually quite interested myself in experimenting with one of these now. How about hydration? That's a second component that you list on your website that this measures. How does the measurement of hydration actually work?

So it's a very similar technique, except that instead of using an optical signal, it uses an electrical signal. So it will pulse very, very low voltage electricity through your tissue. And that's a technique called bioimpedance that you might have heard of.

Sure. It's what you'd normally use to measure body fat, for example.

Right. And so bioimpedance is actually not super accurate when it comes to differentiating between fat mass versus muscle mass. But what it's actually quite good at doing is measuring water versus dry mass. And so we're able that way to look at basically how hydrated your tissue is. Now, it's not, we don't measure anything like electrolytes, which I wish we could do, but it's just not something that we've cracked yet. So instead we can inform you of basically the, in a way, the water content of your body. And that, you know, at least it gives you an indication of where you are versus the optimal hydration level. And that way you can, you know, you can sort of keep your performance up to par.

So this spectrometer could not potentially measure something like say, plasma electrolyte concentration.

So technically this technology can measure anything in the blood from the macro elements to the micro elements. But there are two limitations. One is basically the concentration of what you're looking for because the smaller it is, the harder it is to find. And the second one is sometimes molecules have a signature that overlaps with each other. And so it might be difficult sometimes to separate some of them, but in a way that's, that will improve in the future because sensors on the hardware side get better and better every single year. And so who knows what we might be capable of in two years from now?

Gotcha. Okay, gotcha. All right, so in terms of it measuring tissue levels of hydration, is it able to Measure that in locations other than the wrist where the actual wearable is placed?

Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, it's a proxy in a way, because ideally you would want to have a contact point on each of your feet and both of your wrists or your hands that would give you a slightly more accurate measurement. But we think so far with the testing that we've done, we think it's sort of a good enough indication. And anyway, when you compare it to.

What'S available today, if the tissues that were in your wrist or the tissues where that spectrometer was actually analyzing were in a state of low water content, that would be a proxy to indicate that it would be likely that the rest of your body would be in a state of low water content or low hydration?

Yeah, that's the assumption. And it's something that we are testing in a hospital right now. So we have a partnership with a sports physiologist in his lab and they run tests with us, a few people a day. And we just keep on logging data and trying to understand how good of a proxy it is, but so far, so good.

Okay, got it. All right, so it's going to measure fuel and hydration, and then the next thing that you list is rest and recovery. How does that measurement actually work?

So the idea there is, since we're able to observe your metabolism in a way, we're able to see what's the amount of energy you've burned, say the day before when you were doing that marathon we were talking about, and how much your water storage is depleted. We can also measure at pretty much a medical grade level the quality of your sleep. And we can, we can really understand your stress profile pretty well. And there's a few different metrics like that that give us sort of a holistic view of your overall level of fatigue. And we're also able obviously to observe how fast you're getting back to your normal state. And so the idea is to really inform you on, Ben, right now, if we use a scale of fatigue or recovery of say 1 to 10, you know, right now, Ben, you're at 5. So we would recommend that you take this day a little bit easier. Maybe you do a recovery jog, and we just keep on monitoring that and we tell you once you're back at your optimum.

Right, that makes sense. Okay, interesting. So what about heart rate variability? Is it measuring that at all?

Yeah, absolutely. So there's been a couple of companies that have tried to do life based heart rate measurements. The problem with these Products, and, you know, I'm sure you've tried some of them, is that it's just not that accurate. And, you know, it will tell you heart rate is 421 second. The next second it will say it's 136. You know, we'll just go like that, up and down with, you know, no reason behind it. And so that's something that we really worked super hard on is really to make sure that we get quality measurements at all times, regardless of how much movement you're doing, regardless of your skin color, your levels of sweat or the hair that might be in the way. And that's really been one of the big areas of development for us, is sort of having this noise cancellation process of understanding what is a true signal, what is noise and kind of junk in a way, and just cleaning it out all the time. And so we can measure heart rate, heart rate variability, all those things.

Gotcha. Have you ever compared it to something like wearing a chest strap or do you need to wear a chest strap when you're using this?

So you don't need to wear a chest strap because we, you know, so a chest strap works with electrical signals on your chest. Right. We actually don't need that because we can see your pulse directly in the veins and the arteries using our spectrometer. So the uncomfortable chest straps, you can kiss it goodbye. And we have compared it to a chest strap and actually we have reasons to believe we're a little bit better even than a chest trap. So it's pretty exciting.

Interesting. Wow. Yeah. That's the main thing that I've heard quite a bit about is the inaccuracies of many of these measures. So can you explain what the reason is that this would be able to beat out the inaccuracy that you would typically find in something that doesn't use a chest strap?

Yeah, in a way, it's really. Our core competency is around algorithms and algorithm development in the science, because it's basically what I was telling you about a little bit before. The reasons these don't work and the reasons they're inaccurate is because they're unable to tell the difference between the heart rate and the pulse. And if you're moving your hand up and down because you're running, every movement you make is going to introduce a certain level of noise in the signal. Right. Because it's like a shock in a way. So there's an additional shock in the signal. So you have to be able to tell the difference between what is the signal that is due to the heart pumping. And what is the signal that is due to the shock, like moving your hand or like, I don't know, if you're boxing and you're hitting something that's another type of shock, or if you're cycling, there's going to be a different type. And so that's, that's really what we've been working on, is really understanding in a signal that is completely noisy and that is full of these interference, like movement, what is the pulse within that? And so that's something that we've cracked now.

So it's an algorithm that you've actually developed to get rid of the noise that would normally create these inaccuracies.

That's right. It's basically a lot of.

Okay, so based on that, once again, for the rest and recovery components, you're measuring heart rate variability, heart rate, sleep, and anything else?

Yeah, there's a couple more. For instance, we're able to measure your blood pressure, which is something that's never really been done in this form either. It's not something that at this stage is in a medical grade, so we probably couldn't make a medical device out of it. But because you wear it all the time, we have pretty good relative measurements. So we're able to really understand where do you stand versus your normal blood pressure. And that really tells something about either your stress or your overall fatigue. It's a big combination of different metrics that tell us, you know, how does Ben feel right now? What's your body going through right now?

Yeah. Now, is this transmitting as it's measuring these variables, transmitting the information to a computer or a phone, or is all the information housed inside the watch itself? The reason I ask is many of our listeners actually are interested in whether or not something they're wearing is transmitting a constant signal.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So we wanted it to be standalone. So we wanted it to be a device that does the analysis and displays the information. Because that way I've met a lot of athletes who say, I don't want to have to take my phone with me when I'm running. It's a distraction. I don't want to have to pull it out to look at something. I want to see the information very easily. And so that's why we've designed this product the way it is now. It does come with a Bluetooth low energy package, and so you can transmit information to a phone, to a laptop, to a tablet. That's really easy and straightforward.

Okay, got it, got it. But it's not constantly transmitting, like a Bluetooth signal, for example.

At the moment, it's not designed to do that, but it could be done. I mean, the only issue is it drains additional power.

I'm actually more asking because that's something that would deter me from wanting to use a device if it were constantly transmitting. And I kind of like this idea exactly. That much of the information is housed inside the unit itself because I personally don't use my phone when I'm out exercising and like to go as minimalist as possible. Okay, the next thing that you have, the fourth variable listed that you measure is aerobic performance. What do you mean by that and how is it measuring this?

Yeah, so in a way, when you think about it, quantifying fitness is something that's really hard to do. It's rarely something that is objective. And you can't just quantify it by saying, my average time per mile is X. So what we're doing actually is, in a way, we're replicating a couple of tasks that you'd normally have to do in a lab, like a lactic threshold Test or a VO2 Max test. And we're able to do a proxy of that. And so that at least tells you it gives you an indication of where you stand. In a very similar way, again, you know, it's not going to be as accurate as electric threshold test, where you're actually drawing blood and doing chemical analysis of the blood. But you do it outside of a lab, you don't have to pay any extra money to do it. You do it in normal training or racing circumstances. So it has that added value that it's totally portable.

Interesting. Okay, got it. So this is just basically giving you aerobic performance data based on primarily heart.

Rate, heart rate and other things. So we can actually measure a proxy of your lactic acid buildup.

Really? Is that the spectrometer is doing?

Yes, yes. It all works with a similar technology.

So I'm curious, when you say measuring a proxy of lactic acid buildup, what molecule would it be measuring or what proxy?

So you can take a look at the ph in the blood. So it's basically the overall acidic state of the blood, and you can detect tiny changes. And there's been a few scientific articles about how that and lactic acid are correlated, and it's pretty good.

Interesting. So it could measure alkalinity acidity in your bloodstream. That's interesting information. I mean, obviously, we've kind of defied the myth that you can make significant changes to your acid alkaline balance by doing something like buying an expensive countertop water alkalinizer or something like that. And that most of the work is done by your kidneys and your breath. But at the same time, it would be quite interesting to use that as a self quantification experiment. Right. To see if, for example, does switching to an alkaline diet affect the ph of my blood? I'm curious, can the user hack into this data? Right. Are you simply giving like a dumbed down version on a dashboard on the watch, or would I be able to actually delve into the data and look at all my different proxies if I were using this device?

Yeah, so it's, you know, I mean, technically the data is there obviously, but it's in a way it's a little bit of a dangerous territory to be in in terms of the FDA regulations because it is a consumer device and we don't make medical claims which we can't make because if we did, then we would have to go through an FDA regulation process. And so my assumption is I don't think we can give the base data, but some of the work that we're doing now is making sure that even if we give a dumbed down version, it's still very, very meaningful to the user. And if you ever have any feedback on that, I'd be really interested to hear it. Because we want to try our best to give the user something that they understand and that really allows them to act on the results without being in a medical territory.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And that's for example, something that I've done with the Beddit, for example, which measures sleep is I've worked with those folks and they've actually developed a separate online dashboard that I as a coach and trainer can delve into and actually access data for each of my clients that are proxies that normally wouldn't be displayable within the basic app itself. So it's really interesting way to look at it. I'd love to be able to delve into some of those, some of those proxies that you're measuring because this is super interesting. Most of the wearables, and I wasn't at the Consumer Electronics show, but most of the wearables that I've looked into so far actually don't measure many of these, many of these variables. So what else can you tell me about this device? Is there anything else that we haven't covered that is interesting or unique or anything else that you want to share?

I mean, you know, I think we've really gotten through sort of the core of what makes this special. Again, the big differentiation is whatever you do, we capture it because we look directly at your physiology, we look into your blood, and we can tell here is the impact of everything you've done. Because at the end of the day, to some extent, you don't care about your activity separately from your nutrition. All that matters is how your body is reacting to it. So in a way, that's really our thesis for building this technology and this product. The one thing we didn't say is this will come with sort of the basics of the GPS chip and a few other things, like your Garmin would, because we know nobody wants to have two of those devices or what are two of those devices.

Oh, so it will come with gps?

Yes.

Interesting. Okay. When does this actually become available? I'm just curious if this is five years in the future or if this thing is kind of around the corner.

Thankfully not. It's not five years. Right now, we're basically at a stage where the hardware is pretty much finalized. What we do need to go through is the industrial design of the product. So making it in a small or smallish package that is attractive, that looks good, that people will want to buy because it does what it needs to do, but it also fits into your lifestyle. So that's work we're doing over the next few months. We will start taking orders sometime this summer and we expect to deliver hopefully, first order of next year.

Okay. Okay. So for those of you listening in, depending on when you're listening into this, that would be the first part of 2016.

Yes.

Okay. Got it. Cool. Cool. And for those of you listening in also, I will let you know if I find out anything else more about this, this Echo Labs device. But in the meantime, if you want to look into it for yourself, bookmark this. I'm guessing you guys probably have some method. You have like a newsletter or something on your website, Pierre, where people can opt in to learn more or find out when it's actually released.

Yeah. So we have a contact form at the bottom of our website and we're always happy to hear from anyone who's interested. If you have any questions, any feedback, we'd love to hear it.

Yeah. Okay. All right. Well, cool.

And I answer every single email.

Yeah. So just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com EchoLabs opening the kimono for you. I have no financial affiliation with Echo Labs. I have not received any product from them or anything like that. But the reason I'm giving you that URL is so that you can access the show notes and so that the folks over at Echolabs can see what kind of traffic they're getting from this particular episode in terms of the amount of interest that is or is not generated, depending on how much of a geek or technophobe you actually are. So, Pierre, thanks for coming on the show and sharing this stuff with us today. It's really fun.

Thanks for having me.

It was fun. I have to admit, I look forward to getting my hands on one of these things and trying it out at some point in the future. So thanks for coming on.

Yeah, of course. Very happy to.

All right, folks. Well, this is Ben Greenfield and Pierre Jean from Echolabs signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com EchoLabs have a healthy week.

Visit BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness, nutrition and performance advice.

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