From sports and fitness to clinical diagnostics, wearable sensors could have a significant impact on healthcare. Metria is another state of the art-monitoring product, which primarily aims to target what thee company feel all other product are missing:

-        Comfort

-        Discretion

-        Cost

Rather than having to carry your mobile device around on you, or wear a bulky watch, Metria is a small sensor, which attaches to your skin using an adhesive. This allows the product to comfortably be attached to you over a long period, perfect for all day activities like exercising and showering. This therefore allows the product to gather enough critical information to understand your body. It monitors everything from heart rate and respiration to sleep duration and activity levels.

Once the device has this information stored, it can be integrated wirelessly to a computer, which then calculates and analyses the data, offering trends and helps to facilitate this for healthcare professionals. These statistics can then be viewed via a smartphone or web browser, summarizing all information obtained.

Metria says it is planning for the future. With so many raised concerns about health, being able to track these statistics at home is a necessity.

RunKeeper was one of the original companies to produce a smartphone based activity tracker and to this day is an industry leader. Pebble CEO Jason Jacobs was quoted saying that “the company is very interested in wearable technology.”

It is thought that this integration to Pebble will help spread the device to broader horizons that includes health and fitness consumers. The device once set up with RunKeeper will display pace, speed, and distance travelled and offer workout start and stop features. This makes it perfect for runners, cyclists or generic fitness fanatics and allow them to compete with the wearable fitness monitoring gadgets like Nike Fuelband, Jawbone etc.

Jacobs tried to push the fact that this was merely the start for RunKeeper and more was to come as the app developed. However for this moment in time, it doesn’t seem to offer the same indulged detail as some other fitness apps already out their on the market. On the plus side you are getting a smartwatch, which the possibilities in terms of advancement are endless, but if you are looking for purely a fitness tracker, you will probably be better looking elsewhere.

Well now the Zone Dome released by Running Unlimited have developed a unique new product which fits to the end of your everyday treadmill and allows you to run through some of the most glamorous scenes in the world. It consists of a 1.5 metre wide screen and allows users to select up to five supplied scenes throughout the world, including:

-        Monument Valley

-        Route 66

-        Humphrey’s Peak

-        Dawn at Joshua Tree

-        Area 51

One of the biggest negative is that it does not offer sound, so whether or not this will actually attract runners is yet to be seen. Users can select 20 of 40-minute runs at speeds of between 9 and 12 km/h, which aren’t particularly long for your keen jogger. The aim is to get these into gyms and leisure centres, which I think will work as a tool of getting people on the machines, initially. However once people have used it, I see the screen being somewhat of a gimmick, especially at the cost of £3,940 per unit and £500 to update a new destination to view.

Runtastic is an app primarily designed for individuals, designed to promote fun activity throughout exercise and allowing you to completely take control of your plan, avoiding all distractions. There are a variety of different apps depending on your choice of exercise, including road and mountain biking, walking and others, designed so that you have as little shift in life style as possible.

Simply download the app and you will be able to monitor up to a number of attributes including distance, speed, pace, time, heart rate, calorie consumption and route travelled via a GPS system. This is not to mention all the other statistics recorded through the upgraded PRO version. Once you have completed your workout, you are given the ability to monitor all of these statistics through your smartphone device or online, allowing your to keep track of improvements and save favourite routes.

Nutrino is the virtual nutritionist that takes into account users, favourite foods to consume, ideal goals, habits and tastes to overall improve their life style.

Nutrino prides itself on being unique due to the fact it will specify itself to the exact user traits allowing the app to be more attractive and dieting to be easier. The app is allowed to do this through the user answering a series of questions about themselves, their physical ability and diet. Once this is done, the user chooses they’re desired goal (i.e. loose weight) and the app will develop a weekly meal plan to suit the scenario.

There will be changes into people diets, hence the reason they are using the app in the first place, however Nutrino aims to keep as many of the foods the user likes to eat in the plan as possible. This transformation can sometimes be off putting, so Nutrino aims to help those struggling. They do this through its “Grocery List” which offers the user various channels to purchase their food; this includes many top supermarkets including ASDA and Tesco.

The app has just launched on iOS and featured at this years TNW conference, worth checking out.

However now, the product has been completely revamped, creating a sturdier and more productive model. The wristbands come available in eight colours in an attempt to try and make them as fashionable as possible, which I would say they have made a success of, especially compared to other bulky competitors on the market. The band is coil, which clings to your wrist with a connecting point at one of the ends used for charging and syncing.

The purpose behind the detector is to improve your overall fitness and by monitoring your steps per day self-motivation should hopefully give you an incentive to keep upping your exercise. Also Jawbone have done their research and found that people whom track their steps end up moving around 26% more than those who don’t, a good sales pitch!

The band however does offer other unique abilities, which will separate it from competitors, these include a reminder setting which alerts you to get up and stretch you legs as well as a sleep mode designed to monitor how well and how quickly you fall to sleep. All of the setting can be accessed through the app available on iOS and Android. These are all really useful tips to maintaining a healthy lifestyle, and the only real negative is needing to connect Up with your smartphone before being able to view your progress.

Yes spring is here and the joggers will be hitting the roads in an attempt to achieve that summer fitness height. Whether you’re a serious runner or a beginner having comfortable equipment is a must otherwise your experience will not be enjoyable, or at least bearable.

This is where Nike steps in with their new Nike Free 5.0+, 4.0 and 3.0 running shoes. Apparently the new trainers have been in development for over twelve years and Nike claim to be the closest thing to bare foot running on the market.

According to the sports giant being able to run naturally allows us to reach our full capacity. It’s just unfortunate that we have to spend a lot of money on shoes to offer us the protection. However if you have to, why not purchase a shoe that has Hot Knifing engineered mesh and fly-wiring technology (apparently this allows the shoe to move more freely)? As well as this the Nike Free shoes will strengthen your feet as they allow increased flexibility and balance, pretty much the same as training bare foot.

The reason for releasing three different products is to offer differentiate the amount of support you need. Starting at the 5.0 a sturdier trainer to the lightweight feeling of the 3.0 with the 4.0 acting as a middleman. So the weathers picking up, lets get at it!

Each week you receive a new challenge created for your specific goal and it helps to push you to your limits. It is full of recommendations, offering you information as to the best training times and proper recovery periods, again provided by physical trainers. FCB Fitness also incorporates social networking to offer that competitiveness needed to keep upping your work out against your friends. This can be recorded buy the amount of rewards and points you receive by completing your challenges.

On the whole, probably not too different from other fitness tracking apps, although a clever piece of marketing could prove all to well to be the difference, for the simple face Barcelona is a global brand already well recognised by almost every community. 

LIT allows users to measure such things as speed skiing down a mountain or extended airtime for boarders and logs all of these statistics into your smartphone or tablet. This may not be the biggest category within sports but it definitely offers a niche currently unavailable on the market. The other aspect of LIT is that it promotes competition through social media sharing, which we consider to be an added bonus as you always have someone pushing you. Essentially LIT are trying to emulate what GoPro did with digital cameras, where they specifically designed them to capture coverage in extreme conditions.

But don’t think that if your not doing backflips on your bike that this product will not meet your satisfaction. It’s monitoring of exercise including running and walking are second to none and by using the clever gamification element allows you still to compete with your friends or set individual targets.

The product is designed to be durable in all conditions due to is target market, this amounts to it being waterproof and shock resistant. Unfortunately the device is yet to be on sale to the public, although retail price is thought to be around $149.

The groundwork of the app is a good idea as mentioned, however it seems Reebok have not fully taken advantage of their creativity. The calendar only allows you to track progress up to 12 weeks, which is great for a beginner, but what do they offer to the more experienced/dedicated users? Also there are only 5 categories, which you can participate in; walking, running, dance, yoga and training, all very brief as training could consist of many different variables, so there was hope still. However this was soon short lived, as the training routines are basically advanced stretches, they offer no exercises for muscle development training, however in their defence it does not promise to be a bodybuilding app.

Another negative of the app is that you are expected to compete in at least two of the variables provided, which does not suit everyone as you may want to focus on one area of training, for example if your training for a marathon you will not want to waste a training day dancing or doing yoga.

Once you have chosen your types of training the app will create a programme for you consisting over the period chosen by you at the start (6-12 weeks). This does not offer you progression stats though, merely the opportunity to share on social media sites and links to purchase Reebok products on your rest days.

This app could be useful for someone starting out in fitness and doesn’t have the knowledge of what exercises are right to participate in, although overall it is not an impressive app, considering those already on the market.