Google's New Device Will Help Your Doctor Track Your Health

Google’s love affair with with smart wearables continues with its latest one aimed specifically at medical patients.

On Tuesday, Google unveiled to Bloomberg a new health tracking band developed by Google X — the research arm headed by company co-founder Sergey Brin. The band can be used in clinical trials and drug tests, and will provide physicians with minute-by-minute data on patients. It can measure pulse, heart rhythm, skin temperature, light exposure and noise levels.

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Google Driverless Car The Google Self-Driving Car has been in the works since 2005 after a team of engineers won a grant from the U.S. Department of Defense to design an autonomous car. The project, which aims to reduce traffic accidents, has made headway in recent years as states passed laws permitting self-driving cars. Google plans a commercial release between 2017 and 2020.

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Google's smart contact lenses.

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Disease Detecting Pill Google unveiled its plans to disease-detecting ingestible pill in October, a project that'll let patients access their real-time health data to encourage preventative care. The pill will contain nanoparticles that can bind to certain cells and chemicals, with the possibility of detecting diseases like cancer in early stages.

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Google and many other companies have released dozens of consumer-grade fitness tracking bands in the past few years, but people have generally not worn these reliably enough for medical tracking. Conrad’s team hopes that an extra-accurate band can help provide better data for researchers and physicians.

This isn’t Google X’s first foray into medical devices — the division is working on a smart contact lens that could help diabetic patients monitor glucose levels, and last year it acquired Lift Labs, a startup developing a motored spoon for people suffering from tremors.

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