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The Future of Wearable Technology

I'm gonna be talking a little bit about the future of healthcare. Ah, and I've given a large large talk about this. I spoke of the Royal Society of Medicine about three or four months ago and talked about how wearable devices or the future of health care. And I mentioned this briefly in the previous session that that it blew my mind that the majority of wearable devices that exist today have only been around for hostile for three years. The technology that's made it possible has only been around for three years. And what was really interesting in the research was also seeing the data from what caused death in the past. And, um, I love to switch over to my laptop really briefly if we can. There's a quote here. That's Ah, we're still standing on the bank of the Risk river, rescuing people who are drowning. We have not gone to the head of the river to keep them for falling in. That is a 21st century task. This quote is from ah from medical book, and it's ah, it's for doctors and the cause...

of death in the 20th century. And in the 18 in the 19th century, it was almost exclusively communal communicable disease, you know, up until the Spanish flu that killed a ton of people in the early 19 hundreds, Um, there were almost all afflictions were caused by communicable diseases, and today it's more than 50% of of our of deaths are caused by lifestyle diseases and afflictions of affluence. Things quote is about not fixing the problem but looking upstream, looking at not responding to problems or rather more of a public health requirement. It's time to start to stop the epidemic from the start. And I think that wearable devices are one of the first inventions that are gonna help us move that way. Some of today's biggest problems are obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer there. They're problems that are very interesting because they're things that didn't exist in past because people didn't live long enough to experience them. Obesity was never an issue when we didn't have enough food. And in this strange world, where it's easier, Teoh get where people who are poor or fatter than people who are who are thin, it's a very strange time for us to live. But in another way that's really interesting is that innovations today are causing products become cheaper and smaller, and things like worldwide Internet on sensor technology is making it easier to track and refine behavior each day. So I've been showing off a couple devices today, and yesterday I showed off the basis wristband, which I think is awesome, measures your heart rate. It measures your perspiration in your temperature. Um, I showed off a little bit of a pavalock device. The shocking wristband that I've been working on and I want to show to really cool devices that I think are are very interesting. Uh, these two devices that we have right here are these not ahead. Pair head phones. This is the news e g headset, and it's also it's It's a device that helps you track your track and measure your brain activity cereal to look at measures or Alfa beta, Fabian beta and gamma waves and using ah, Bluetooth connection to your phone. It's able to accurately instantaneously measure your basic thought process and the thing activity brain. What's really cool about it is that it's an open platform, is an open source device so anybody can develop any kind of use for it. So currently there's an app, which I'm gonna show off toe. Somebody in the audience would like to try it out, but it's a it's a meditation app. It's an app that allows you to that trained you to help lower your brain activity by, um, by ah by measuring your alpha beta beta gamma waves and making sure your brand to be slow. And it plays music in its ah, in your ear and shows little picture on the screen. And as of ah, like a call the beach. And as your brain activity increases high, uh, it as you granted increases, it sounds like a thunderous beach. And as your ranch every goes goes lower, it sounds like a like a shore like like waves on the shore. So what's really interesting is you get, like, really feedback on when your brain is active when your brain is inactive. Um, now it does take a minute or two to set up, so I'd love for someone to join me up here and sit up here, takes a minute for this toe, warm up to your brain sense Teoh for the sensors to warm up to you. So while this is getting warmed up, I'll demo. Uh, no devices. Well, does anybody who'd like Teoh come up and try it out? Let's bring it out. Go ahead and put that on your ear and let's see if it's paired. Will. This is just, ah, configuration. It's tryingto make sure that it has good contact with you and trying to move too much, focusing straight. We got a better chance. Um, while I'm while I'm setting this up with you, I would love to bring some mark. Why don't you come up here and we'll test out this focus trainer that I know you're excited to try out. This is gonna take a mentor to warm up to you. So it's, uh it's not a big deal. Go ahead and go inside. Right over. We need a stool. Um, capsule, please. That's not good. And could we switch over to my computer, please? He's Let's switch over my laptop. Please come over here. Uh, Mark from computer. Great. So what? This device is going to do just that? The suffering a moment, uh, this device is gonna do this is actually interesting. Instead of being, there's e g. And there's Hee E G. And uh, E G is sort of the more common used in doctor patient situations that measures your brain waves. H E G is measuring the auction content prefrontal cortex. And this information is really interesting because you can use it. Use a device. This is called the Brain the Focus upgraded focused brain Trainer, which uses two sensors. There's one flashing red light which you can see, and one infrared right light, which you can't see to measure the amount of auction. Contact your prefrontal cortex. What's cool is that it's able you're able, Teoh, monitor your you're able to train your brain to bring oxygen to your prefrontal cortex, which could help, which could help that which can basically help the prefrontal cortex get trained. Teoh Increase its world power loader. Increase its calling it a blood. I'll show you how it looks, So I'm gonna go and put this on you. Keep that red light right in the centre. Your forehead should be tight, but not too tight. And, uh, we're gonna open up h e g studio. And right now you're going to see a flying screen. Great. Thank you bring. So what's happening in this is Thea Device is is measuring his HCG ratio, which is his auction ratio. His brain. And the goal is to make the video go forward. If he's able to make the video go forward, it's mean it means he has auction coming to the front of his brain. If you video goes backwards, it means that he's he's lost focus, and it's not as much prefrontal cortex stimulation. It's kind of an interesting video, But go ahead and just try to make it move forward no matter what it takes and see what happens. You're supposed to keep your eyes open or closed. Whatever it takes. I probably keep it close for a minute. See what happened when you close your eyes. You see what happened when he closes his eyes. Suddenly the baseline shoots up. I go ahead and, uh, why don't you start talking to me? Tell me about your day. Um, it's been a good day. I've been sitting here in the front row for most of the day without what's something that you learned about, uh, in the session with in a session with David Goldstein was something interesting he talked about well, so one thing that he mentioned and I don't think picking up this whole weekend is, um, how this habit change process leads to a fundamental identity change, which is something I never really thought about is this process is used as a gap, while you're tryingto identify yourself as the type of person who does this behavior. So I'm trying to develop this riding habit. I think eventually I'll become the A person who identifies as a writer. I think that's really powerful. That's where this technique, that's how this technique becomes a long term permanent change. It's really cool to see how when people started focus and start to think and start to talk. For some people, the brand TV starts to increase. It just shot off the charts. You started over 1 55 year not 1 72 and actually can keep that activity going forward, whereas sometimes you try to focus on making a go forward the brand the video starts to play backwards because the act of trying Teoh t go forward doesn't work quite as well. I'm gonna go ahead and try to shock you now and see what happens? I've never actually done this before, so I'm pretty excited to see what happens to your score. We have two fingers for your mind. Turn this way and I just go ahead and just keep focusing. See what happens. Nothing. No, you're not conductive. Let's try another one of you felt it. Yeah. Hey, lost a little bit of focus CEO backwards up. Come back up. But I'm actually really This is excited for me. This is my new study. It definitely drives you back a little bit, right? Every time it seems like you've paired. Go and sit straight forward. And don't move too much a little, and, uh, give it one moment. I think you repaired. Yeah. Keep trying to focus over here, and I'm going to and, uh, we could switch over to my phone. Great. I'm gonna give you some earbuds for a moment. Records You put those in for? Not fitting, right. Sorry I needed with usually this process. It's one of those learning things. Every people fit where differently. So I'm sorry this takes a little time to set up, but go and put it in, and then just sit straight and close your eyes for a moment and it should calibrate it seems like it's been calibrated to you. Oh boy, I lost last try. There wasn't one. It's time to call 1 805 weight muse. There we go. Ah, well, I was hoping to show it, uh, tried. I was hoping to show it do a similar thing has the CH e g sensor. Yet for some reason when you twisting that way since we're working better. But this this is all, Of course, one of the issues with with the with modern day tag is just getting things to be calibrated correctly and getting getting good connection. There we go. If you had faced that way, I suppose close your eyes and listen to the instructions. Can we possibly play music out of the phone? That's okay. What's what's being said right now is, um, she's being asked to think about specific things just being asked to think about, um, she's being asked to think about a list of a list of movies or list of games, a list of sports in order to help her in order to get a baseline level of brain activity. Um, Yeah, we'll go in two or three seconds. You got a good baseline, man. My baselines. Like one. Like in the seventies or eighties. It's I've noticed that there's a pretty high correlation with focus and baseline on this. You wanted to be hires? I think so. I don't think that that your ability to focus is a function of your of your baseline level. So if you're baselines 70 are you typically flying backwards? Now it starts off 70 and I try to get to 75 72. So this guy calibrate and what she's gonna be hearing in a moment is just a, uh It's gonna be a beach beach. Uh, beach scene. You got it? Yeah. You got that screen to start your so I got it. I got okay. Yeah, it's just calvary right now. There we go. So right now you can see is ah, screen. That's showing the showing. Kind of a tumultuous activity. There's Ah, this is a medium level. It's calm. And as her brain gets more active, screen starts toe fill up with thundery clouds. So she's ah, So she if you go and try to focus on your breath and watch as her reign activity starts to calm down. I hope you don't mind. I'm about to shock you. They borrow on your hands. I don't feel it. Know that's hurt. No, I didn't feel anything. Have a some people. You're not getting it. Try a different one on new. This one isn't going. Yeah. You see, you just basically shook. So far, so are lost. The connection are my intuition. Is that the same? It's a similar processes. The A G sensor in that, uh, you go and focus. Just go ahead into a meditation session. You'll feel great. We'll switch over back to this machine and listen heels. Try it. I want to show you kind of summary of her brainwaves as time goes on. Would anybody else like to try the trainer? Anybody? We've got to try this. This h e G trainer. See what? This device That it from you. So there's evidence that suggests that on this device Good. Just a There's evidence. That's just that on this device. Different parts of your prefrontal cortex are operating for different for different reasons. So one part of it, when the left 3rd may work on on scheduling, whereas the right there works on willpower and focus. And so I've read some studies that indicate that you should try to train different parts of your preference of your brain by by moving this around. Um, although I'm not sure exactly how true that is, So something we're checking out. I got a look at the screen, you see, even from baseline level, it's interesting or different. People focus for different reasons. Sometimes people, particularly people, were introverted and people who are much better at silence and focus. And sometimes it's visual. Sometimes it's auditory. When they're speaking, they focus, whereas sometimes they focus better just by listening. I found that I myself can Onley focus when I look what I'm talking. So my best way to train is just to say out loud what I want to say, which is really interesting, because if you remember the story about, um, me being unable to write a new investor letter, but me being able to speak it out loud, I learned that I actually come up with ideas by talking in programming. There's, ah, very well known, Um, there's a very well known, uh, type of training a type of debugging code called the rubber duck Method, where you sit a rubber duck in front of the computer. And if you can't figure out why there's a bug in your programming code, you try to explain it to them, step by step. And what happens is that the act of just saying out aloud can help explain. I can help you understand the process why you're failing. So that's, ah, a very common way to improve your skills at at at learning. I'm excited to see I should have given her three minute sessions so you could get closer to the end of the data. Here. You can see I don't ask you to focus on different things. So, uh, go ahead and just close your eyes. Sit back and yeah, and focus right now on the on the on the pressure between your legs on the stool when you're but on a stool between your hand. Then he wouldn't borrow that from you. No gun. It's gone. The's tools. How you actually might be able to use these for tracking habits? Sure, so these air less about tracking and more about the future of habits so I'm excited to see the way that that these devices in particular theme use device, which is an open platform for for beta and beta and gamma testing, how that could be used in different studies, how that can be used with different products and having to use different monitors. So, for example, we're working on integration where, instead of listening to the music for remote for meditation, you can have it signal a slight vibration so it doesn't need to be part. Uh, so doesn't need to be continuous audio. There's a lot of really interesting ways that Yugi sensors might be used in the future, so sleep tracking data can be interesting to be able to identify much deeper analysis of your sleep patterns. Ah, willpower, willpower studies could be used as well on, and so this devices you can see, it's a little bit finicky. It continues to be seated Well, that does a pretty good job once you get it set and you're not getting shucked, Um, I think that over time will be seeing stickers that stick to you that you're able to keep on. Ideally, they'll be invisible. I think they were getting towards really cool in bed herbal products and each new design device. Each new design allows us to look at things in a different way. Um, so right now, um, let's see what you have. So if you don't open your eyes, you can see that you are You've increased quite a bit from your baseline. Your gained 10% as you close your eyes and focused on specific parts. I was tracking my meditation patterns on both devices, and I found that when I tried to focus on looking in, making the screen go forward. It is impossible to money too many data points for popping into my mind when I try to focus on my breath. It didn't work as well, but when I started to focus on allowing myself to think about whatever I wanted to think about, then it started to shoot forwards. So that was the way that I made that I worked on training the brain, this device in particular. Is it more of a training device, so you could use it for 2 to 55 to 10 minutes a day, and on your baseline starts to increase on that baseline increase is, is supposedly it's permanent. So the more the more the longer that you long that you do with the more prefrontal cortex stimulation remains. I haven't done a consistent habit of doing it every day. It's probably one of my next micro habits I'd like to form. And I want to see if my baseline will climb over time as well. Great. Next man. Take that off. Almost done over here. Sure. From online. Manisha. At what point do you see in the future? Is these devices become mawr available on Bmore? You says, what point would you feel they would be useful for a habit building? Were. But using the data you're getting from these particular devices, I think I would think that they're beginning to be useful for Have a building just about right now. Okay, Mom, that's kind of why Reinvented Pavlak first device that helps you form U form habits using ah, wearable device. I'll talk about that in just about one second. Um well, yeah, it's live and let let her finish. We'll see her brain activity and I'll talk a little about how pavlak is effective for habit formation. Great job. Thank you for sharing that, thanks to our volunteers as well. How was that for you? Is that experience? It was interesting. I try to focus on making it move forward. And I was kind of getting frustrated with whenever just moved back with frustration, making it move that further? Um, I think so. I don't know. It just, you know, I felt like I couldn't really, like, make it do anything, so I don't take it out, is that's just how it was for me. Okay, I'm about you know, I would also add that, um it felt like a way of measuring meditation in a sense, and I could see how that could become almost a little bit addictive. Where you you get it right, you get a score. You could see whether you were flying forward or backwards. What your change was over baseline. And then if you start doing that every day and you can start to track your progress over time, I could see how that could help you develop that as a habit. Meditation, as I have it. And both APS are actually really powerful from a meditation perspective. So the com app which enforcement just ran a battery. It shows you how much percentage every time is spent and focus. And how much time is an active state? How much time is in, uh, in a light state of brain activity and how much time is in a low or no calm state of activity? And what they do is they give a very good individualized metric for when something is positive and when something is not so Individuals work differently. Individuals work. Uh, some individuals, like I mentioned, focus better when they're thinking about their position and if they focus on their breath and others focus better when they're thinking about other things or they're not thinking at all or when they hear music or focus on the sounds of the external Hughes. Um, what's great is that it's individualized of the human being. So we're able to grab data from ah, large group of people and were ableto grab to grab data from large group people to see what trends exist over societies. And we're also able to individualize and for people, I think that that is the future of of, uh of behavior tech. There's really interesting new ways to and novel ways to incorporate these these technologies. So there's new in teeth sensors. I've seen these cool accelerometers ago on your teeth, and they have some. There's some cool like sensors coming out of different countries that have the ability to know when sugar, alcohol or tobacco passes through your teeth. And you can imagine what that would mean if we can get an accurate sugar device that knows when wind sugar passes through teeth. In fact, that's one of the things that I'm hoping that we can do soon. So my my company, of course, pavlak is a wearable device. Uh, it's a few versions of it here, um, designed to help people form good habits and break bad habits. We discussed how shock can be used as an aversion therapy for helping people break bad habits. Someday I can't wait, and it won't be that long. From today, we'll have ah tooth sensor that can identify when sugar is passing through it, and all classic conditioning research indicates that if sugar were to pass your teeth and you were to get shocked at the instant that sugar passed through teeth, your brain would start to train itself to associate the taste of sugar with the pain of shock and create a taste aversion to the point that you don't just simply not sugar anymore. You don't desire to eat sugar anymore, and that's pretty cool. From a medical perspective, you can imagine how that could change people who, uh, who have diabetes, for instance, that they were able to train away the enjoyment of sugar. You could get a large shift in health in health metrics throughout the country. There's a lot of examples of aversion therapy being used for alcoholism and for tobacco and cocaine addictions. Alcoholism is an interesting study. They do these, ah, do some really interesting research in Russia. There is a really high alcoholism rate where they have these chemicals, or these injections that cause people to essentially get very sick and vomit if they have any alcohol. And they and the act of having that negative reinforce er that they know if they drink any alcohol, it might lead to a T. A terrible reaction just stops people in their tracks to go cold turkey because you know there's a chance that they could, in fact die if they have even a glass alcohol. For someone who's chronically chronic alcoholic, that can lead to a big difference in the way they live. Um, even for for the deepest of alcoholics does anybody as any other chatter in the chat room about it for you Discuss, discuss how we're trying to approach these problems with Pablo's. People are saying, you know that they're seeing the future to fresh starts saying teeth sensors they recognize that will also make no cheating on your diet. Except so, yeah, people are really interested in the future of the device is acceptable. So, yeah, let's get let's say some more. Yeah, there's some really cool things that we can do with with accelerometers and of themselves An accelerometer is a little tiny. It's a little tiny chip. That's president. Basically everything we own all wearables out of these days. You're IPhones have it. Um, I can't really show it to you because they were very time with size of if you can zoom in of one of these little little squares, lose little rectangles, and what they do is a measure motion in 3 to 9 axes. So, uh, in 39 access so they know you're X Y Z position. They know your, um they know your, ah, the motion of your hand. They can? No, but they can know a lot more. So the emotion of the just the out of the ability to understand the X y Z axis for, for instance allows you to calculate things much deeper, like steps like elevation changes like, uh, like the motion of your hand even. But there's also Mawr, the six and nine access accelerometers that are easy to use today. And what they do is the variable measure like rotation as well as my person. My personal favorite is magnetic orientation. So they know when you're facing north and know when you're facing South. We've been doing over a padlock is developing a device that allows, uh, that allows us to create a feedback mechanism to train human behavior. So we have a couple ways of human feedback. We have vibration, we have beeping, and we have electric shock. And, uh, those three things could be used in completely different ways. So, for example, vibration, imagine a wearable device. It looks like this that knows the way that you're facing so knows I'm facing north nine axis accelerometer will easily I indicate that Put on your chest this thing six to now. Every time you face north, it's slightly vibrates. So what's been shown toe happen in for? For blind people, there is a type of belt that vibrates when they face north, and it's been shown that after a couple days of wearing it, their ability to navigate increases significantly. I read in some places that increases as good as somebody who cited because they know which way they're facing. Slight vibration doesn't bother them. They just get used to it. But they add an intrinsic sense of magnetic orientation, so you can imagine what that would mean. As we add in our nine axis accelerometer and here, being able to put that on your chest within a day or two, you would instantaneously know which way North is, which means that if you were wearing this at a party, you would be the best navigational aware person at that party bar. None in a sense, we have given 1/6 sense to you. It's kind of making human into a superhuman as kind of what I'm working towards with Pablo is ah, device that allows you commit to what you want to do and start training your behavior, using all sorts of different sensors. So that's one example with vibration feedback you can get ah, training for North for finding North for things like, uh, the beeping we've mentioned over and over again is very effective, as as a way to train away behavior. So when you want to set a commitment to not use Facebook, every time you use Facebook, it can beat my phone's. Also, I can't show you, but I can't. You can't hear it, but you'll definitely be able to see it. Um, where we have ah connection for pavlak where you hook into a ah chrome extension that allows you to if you can switch over my computer, please. My motivational penguin, Um, on the right. You see, a little, uh, you see, a little, um, chrome extension. That's the padlock up allows you to choose how many tabs you want open when you have. If you choose a tablet of like 10 for instance, if you go over Aziz, get tau nine tabs, it'll start to vibrate. 10 tabs begins to beep. 11 tabs begins to shock You can also use the the ability to break bad habits or break bad website addictions by allowing yourself to create black sites that will simply shock you on command. So those are some ways that we're using, uh, reusing shock and deep in order to help people pre commit and train their behavior. And then, lastly, one of the coolest things we can do is modulate your vibration. So, using sensors, uh, there's some really cool sensors coming out here that there's. For example, there's a sensor called the Push sensor, which is for people who are doing barbell exercises. It knows that it knows the force of each thrust that they do on on each exercise and for a lot of, ah, a lot of power lifters. They want to keep their force constant at all times, but unfortunately, the sensors that exists require you to do the exercise and then pull out your IPhone. Look at it and then it tells you that you did. You should have exerted more force on that on the first trap, unless on the second night, but with instantaneous feedback with Pavlak, you'll be able to connect it directly to the sensor, and it'll vibrate in one way. If you should push harder, vibrate another way. If you should push, push less. We have 256 levels of vibrations. You can scale it back and forth in orderto help you dial in and train your behavior. Political examples are there's another sensor, which is used for golf swings and baseball swings, and so you can imagine that they know how much follow through You're giving on each one and the idea of If you, uh if you follow through too far, it can give you instantaneous feedback. If you fall fault or not far enough, they'll give you a different type of feedback. So you know that you should be training your behavior on each one. In a way, it's kind of like a personal coach. We're trying to build personal coach on your wrist. It's like someone who's just telling you back and forth. Do this, Do this, do this instead of you having to look at it later on and hope that you improve. I think that we can help improve human behavior through instantaneous feedback. So that's what we're working on with Pavlak. Is there any questions about Pavlak. No questions. Actually, we're getting great comments back Fresh started saying These tools will change the world as we know it and they will change our lives with better health and productivity through better choices. Yeah, it's really cool to see what's happening, and it's actually like for me. I feel so grateful that I get to be part of trying to make it happen. I think that, um, that it was a that it's only been possible for the last few years and Hardware's and that's really, really difficult. It's a really difficult thing to do. It's taken me hundreds of thousands dollars and a lot of work and over a year of 10 plus people's time on effort to make, you know, just this prototype chip, much less a highly manufacturer ship, that's Ah, we're shipping out thousands of customers. Not necessary. The Pavlak was something similar to this. I mean, I mean minutes tried it in its basics form. He got somebody to slap him in the face. I mean, anybody actually tried this kind of really not necessary aggressive, but this kind of aversion therapy themselves in any other aspect before price. I think you've done a little bit of that therapy, right? Yeah, I have done not. Not exactly shock therapy, but yeah, I have have done bets before of doing something Where I had a had a commitment to do something. Um, and it was toe create a habit of having a green smoothie every morning and then doing that, and yeah, it was extremely effective. Yeah, it hurt when you So what happened? Exactly? How is your bet for the bet was every single morning. I have toe have a green smoothie and send a picture of it to my brother by I think it was 8 a.m. And then if I didn't do it, then I would lose $50 so he would have to give him $50 by 8 a.m. To wake up that early. Uh, yeah. I definitely have all the bet was happening. That's how did you succeed? Did you ever fail? I did fail once. It was painful. 50 bucks is not a small piece of change, but yeah, through the whole rest of it. I just looked at that as my tax basically mawr forming the habit. And that's something that I still do every day. I still wake up every morning and I still have a green smoothie. So it's been great. That's great. Great. It's good you kept it up. Um, that's also have any of you ever try to bet as well? Well, I've tried, um, a similar concept. It wasn't a bed. It was a product called Demo back. I'm not sure if you've heard of it, but it also provides tactile feedback by it's a strap that you wear around your waist, and it buzzes when you slouch. So we'd be buzzing for me right now until you sat up with a straight posture and I wore for two days and it was buzzing constantly all day, every day, and I was in massive pain and the battery died, and I got really sick of it. So I took it off and never ward again. That's the common problems loom back. In fact, it's sitting on my floor of my house to in the same situation, actually says that's something I would need. But I think you're right. I think that has to be a degree of slouch, maybe has a degree slot. It has the ability to the promise. It's annoying, and, um, the issue with it is that they don't have any ability for them, for you to pre commit toe wearing it at all times. So it's like it's one of the things that you know. You should wear it and you can wear. And if you did wear it all day and it continued to know you would train you, but it doesn't offer, in my opinion, they're very close. They just need a few more habit and behavioral take techniques, less about the technology is there. And now I think the science on the psychology is catching up to it. We had to. By combining psychology and technology, we can really lead ourselves to a new future. So that's what I'm hoping for next few generations and on the next few years, and hopefully people are watching. It seems like you're the most likely to get us there because you know more about willpower and habits than most people do