Live reports from the Wearable Technology Show in London.
ZACHARY ZHOU 4.58pm
BikeHud is the world’s only augmented reality head-up display motorcycle helmet. It can display speed, distance and route and was created using 3D printing technology. Inventor Jon Samwell claims: “It’s the safest helmet worldwide.” Samwell is also developing a smart wristband, which can show heart rate and blood pressure to monitor health on a long journey.
JOSE PEDRO ABREU 4.03pm
Patient Voice is an online platform for users of health services to give easy and immediate feedback. Dr Waheed Hussain explained that users can send anonymous opinions through Patient Voice, which collects the data and sends it to the organization concerned. “The main objective is to improve whatever complaints the users have and there are already some cases where the complaints were addressed”, Hussain said. In the last sixth months Patient Voice has expanded to 16000 public and private companies. “This is just a way to make it easy as possible for both the organizations and the users”, says Hussain.
MATTIE JAMES 3.19pm
Smart watches can help retailers sell a third more, according to intelligence company Inovretail. Sales VP Laszlo Csibi says “smarter technology” has been found to improve customer service and organisation in retail companies. "People who are attending to customers with a smart watch sometimes sell 30% more than their peers,” Csibi said. Inovretail also found that if stock control used smart watches, it encouraged store assistants to use them. “We didn’t have to encourage the shop assistants to use the technology,” Csibi said. “When our CTO was sent the result and they reviewed it with the client, they said that 'There must have been a mistake'”. Inovretail has yet to expand beyond Europe but Csibi insisted that the company seeks to expand globally. “We’re looking at a global takeover,” he joked.
ZACHARY ZHOU 2.14pm
Students from Hong Kong have designed a virtual reality game that encourages people to use fewer plastic bags. The presents a virtual underwater world and shows how rubbish can harm turtles in the sea. The team had to design the interaction between the different objects to make the game feel real. "We want students to learn about environmental problems," said Evan C. W. Chu, the senior teacher of students’ team. "We have to protect sea turtles, which are very important to the whole world, as well as other species." The teacher said many kids did not care much about global environmental issues because they were to complex and seemed too remote. "But they presented their care and love about other species and our planet – it’s quite significant." The students won first runner-up prize in the VR Game Design Competition in 2018.
LUYU CHEN 1.47pm
VR is aiding city planning in Russia, says Ivan Puzyrev, head of AR/VR department at Strelka KB. Stakeholders can view a virtual scene and use buttons to show what they like (green) or hate (red) to provide feedback to developers. The future plan is to provide more services for citizens so they can participate in city construction.
JOSE PEDRO ABREU 1.30pm
The Lancet Digital Health Online Journal will go live in April. The open access journal from the publishers of the medical journal The Lancet is dedicated to publishing original research, comments and correspondence . The main aim will be to promote digital techonologies in health practice worldwide. Some of the subjects covered will be research on digital technology in clinical medicine, public health and global health. The monthly publication will help build and strenghten the relationships between health professionals and researchers.
