Tinke: Heart rate, blood oxygen level and more at your fingertip
zensorium.com
zensorium.com
My mother has something called idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. My aunt also had it. Their mother also had it. It kills as many people as breast cancer every year, by progressively scarring the lungs until it's impossible to breathe. There's no cure except for new lungs. (My mother is waiting for a double lung transplant right now.) As you might expect, measuring blood oxygen efficiency is a good way to track the progress of the condition.
As a result, carrying a smart blood oxygen meter that also measures number of breaths and general health / stress levels really appeals to me. But the health situation here in the States, and in many countries, is fucked (albeit a little better than it was, thanks to our friends at the Obama Administration). Let's say I contracted the condition (although there's no proof that there's a genetic link), or it looked like I might be beginning to succumb, going by my vital signs. The consequences of this information falling into the wrong hands could range from an impact on my career to my insurance standing. It could potentially ruin my life.
Photos of my last Blue Bottle coffee, checkins at Bourbon & Branch, or Lift goal ticks are one thing. This kind of data should not be on a centralized service, in a database I can't directly access. Not ever. And the rise of this kind of product makes me think that there needs to be a sort of WordPress for encrypted personal data, sooner rather than later.
But they offer a way for you to make your information private.
I think the encryption makes even more sense in services like https://www.23andme.com where you're getting genetic analysis information.
I run a health app and very few people (far less than I expected) over the last 3 years showed concern about privacy.
We've actually had more emails about people wanting us to add social features so they could connect with others like themselves.
You might be familiar with sleep apnea, which is a condition in which (one way or another) you stop breathing while asleep, for ten seconds to a few minutes. The cause could be something in your nervous system (we still don't really understand what), or an obstruction in your airways. The result is that you wake up, sometimes with a fight-or-flight (i.e. adrenaline) response. Sleep apnea sufferers wake up several times per night, sometimes not remembering every episode. The net result is that even though, on waking up 'finally', you think you've had a solid 8 hours, you actually had a large number of disrupted sleeps. It's annoying and harmful, and the worst thing is that you might not even know you're a sleep apnea sufferer—when you wake up due to an apnea event, you're typically unaware that it was because you stopped breathing.
This is relevant because, during an apnea episode (and before waking) blood oxygen saturation will drop noticeably. So an easy and accurate way of self-diagnosing is to monitor blood oxygen saturation over the course of the night. Cross-reference those data with a Zeo, say, and you have a cheap, accurate method of self-diagnosis.
I've suspected that I have sleep apnea for a while now. But I don't have an iPhone any more (I sold it and got a Nexus 4), the Tinké doesn't support taking a continuous passive log (since you need to actively press your thumb to it), and I want to do more interesting things with the data than this company's app developers and designers will ever think of, or allow me to. So I guess I'll have to wait until someone else builds something that addresses this need, or build one myself.
- What if you get a negative result (i.e. you're ok)? Are you just gonna live happily ever after, ignoring any symptoms of sleep deprivation since you have already ruled out apnea?
- What if you get a positive result? You'll still have to go through the same kind of studies again, no doctor would give you much credit for your home study.
So, if you suspect you have sleep apnea you should go talk to your doctor. Your notes on sleep apnea are good though... it's a serious and a very commonly undiagnosed/untreated condition... even thought the cure is in most cases relatively noninvasive and cheap(CPAP). People above average weight should be particularly alert to typical symptoms (sleepyness, lack of energy).
Fuck everything being social. I am super interested in my health and fitness but for my own edification, not to broadcast it to the world.
(I'm sure it's an optional feature, but, seriously, being social has to make everyone's MVP now.)
1. Why the iPhone-only connector?
2. My stepfather, back in ye olden days, tried to create a similar product (albeit, this was before ubiquitous mobile computing devices) and ran into all sorts of regulatory FDA issues because they classified it as a medical device, and required the construction of a hoop factory before you were allowed to even start jumping through them.
WARNING
Tinké is NOT a medical device. Tinké and its associated
applications should not be used to diagnose, treat, or
prevent any disease or medical condition. Always seek
the advice of a qualified medical professional.
And the website causes my slick-marketing-plus-low-useful-information-implies-crappy-product sense to tingle due to the lack of upfront pricing, the avoidance of useful screenshots of the app, and phrases like "Zen index" and "social platform"
That and i hate having to plug things in to sync, wireless sync is the future imo. With BT4.0 there is no reason not to.
http://www.zensorium.com/assets/gallery/2/7.jpg
This was a really bad business decision.
I want to use this data to show to my doctor, not myself. And free, exportable access to all my data would allow me to create a simple static webpage displaying all my biometrics.
But pulse oximeters w/ connectivity are generally more expensive. The Nonin 9560 Onyx 2 is probably the best known (BT 2.0) - the best price I could find online for that was $340. The MedChoice MD300C318T (BT) I found online for €199 (~$267). These are the two models that are compatible w/ apps like <a href="http://simpleeye.com/platforms/android/bluetooth-pulse-oxime... Android app</a>.
However, there is a cheaper alternative - the Contec CMS-50E (USB) and apparently a new CMS50EW that also has Bluetooth, can be bought for around $85. I haven't tried the wireless version, but the USB version works well, w/ good community support (<a href="http://ian.ahands.org/progs/pulseox/>reverse engineered protocol</a>) and can be run continuously.
For those interested in actually having/using this type of data, I'd really recommend this over the Tinke, since it doesn't give you access to your data at all (and of course, is limited to connecting to older iOS devices) and generally looks to be just gimmicky.
Lastly, I recommend taking a look at the Wikipedia article to learn more about <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulse_oximetry>pulse oximetry</a>. While Tinke is using it as some sort of overall health diagnosis, it's really most useful for diagnosis of things like sleep disorders (like OSA) or other types of hypoxia (or monitoring for that). I'm pretty doubtful about it's usefulness for monitoring overall health, although it's fun to play with (watch your SpO2 drop as you hold you're breath, wee!)
Lower than normal ox levels can help diagnose that something is "wrong" with your body (or your environment) - lung damage, heart issues, etc. It can't tell you what is wrong, just something is up.
HRV is a pretty good measure of how stressed your body is, looks pretty useful for fitness training and illness/injury prevention.