Standing on a scale looks set to give you more than just your weight, as Withings turns a 90 second scan into roughly 60 health indicators.
What can a scale tell you about yourself? There’s the obvious information of your weight, and possibly how much you gained over the space of Christmas and New Years, but what else can the humble scale say?
For health tech company Withings, the answer could be bigger than you expect.
In the past few years, we’ve seen Withings show off aspects of how a scale can evolve, with bone density, fat mass, heart rate, nerve health, and vascular age some of the features included on its high-end scales, but this year, the company is going deeper.
This year’s variation on that theme is a newly upgraded variation of the Body Scan scale, now in the Body Scan 2, a scale that can cover deeper features the likes of which you might find in a hospital, but hardly at home.
That includes the use of small electrical currents for measuring parts of your body, such as Impedance Cardiography (ICG) for efficiency of the heart, cardiac rhythm, and even how measuring the age of your heart, while Bioimpedance Spectroscopy (BIS) turns the small current into a measurement for metabolic efficiency, glycaemic regulation and glucose levels, and cellular health on the whole.
Impedance analysis isn’t necessarily anything all that new, and Samsung’s wearables use a variation of the technology with its BIA Bioimpedance Analysis sensor. But with Withings’ approach, the concept could go a little deeper.
AI will be employed with a clinically validated model to understand the risk of hypertension, something that you might normally need a blood pressure cuff for, but manages to work without one here.
Getting all of this to work means holding something, and that’s where the scale has you hold onto a special retractable handle with four electrodes to measure your health.
It all forms a list of roughly 60 health indicators, with, this information used inconjunction with algorithms to report on health, sleep, diets, habits, and stress, and it apparently starts with a scan running for 90 seconds.
Each day, though, that scan could lead to more useful information, with lots of measurements coming together to offer personalised information and a score based on your health’s trajectory, providing an indication into what your health is over time and where it might be going.
“The most powerful place to reinvent preventive health is the connected scale,” said Eric Carreel, Founder and President of Withings.
“It’s the only moment where we naturally engage our whole body – hands, feet, posture – allowing us to capture more biomarkers in 90 seconds than any wearable can collect in weeks. Body Scan 2 turns this everyday gesture into a deep health assessment,” he said.
That information won’t be hidden, either, with the information found either on the Withings app or in an LCD built into the scale.
However, you will need a reasonable amount of money to integrate the Body Scan 2 in your life, with an expected launch by Australia’s winter, and a recommended retail price of $899 when it does arrive.
