A smartwatch becomes a payment terminal, signaling a shift toward frictionless, card-free commerce powered by open banking.

Turning Wearables Into Payment Terminals

In a move that pushes the boundaries of both fintech and wearable technology, Huawei has partnered with Luxembourg-based fintech Yowpay to launch what is being described as the world’s first Open Banking smartwatch POS application.

The solution enables a Huawei smartwatch to function as a fully operational point-of-sale (POS) terminal—no additional hardware required.

By leveraging SEPA instant payments and account-to-account (A2A) infrastructure, merchants can now accept payments directly from their wrist. Instead of relying on card networks or physical terminals, the system generates a dynamic QR code on the watch face, which customers scan using their smartphones.

How the Technology Works

Huawei smartwatch displaying a dynamic QR code for SEPA-based payments via Yowpay

At the core of the solution is Yowpay’s orchestration layer, which connects merchants directly to bank-based payment rails.

Here’s how a typical transaction works:

• The merchant opens the Yowpay app on a Huawei smartwatch

• A dynamic QR code is generated on the watch face

• The customer scans the code using their smartphone

• Payment is initiated via SEPA instant transfer

• Funds are received in real time into the merchant’s account

This approach removes intermediaries, bypassing traditional card schemes and their associated fees.

For small businesses, freelancers, and mobile vendors, this could represent a significant shift in both cost structure and operational flexibility.

Why This Matters for Merchants

The implications extend beyond novelty. This is a clear signal of where payments infrastructure is heading.

Key advantages include:

• Lower transaction costs
  By bypassing card networks, merchants avoid interchange and processing fees

• True mobility
  No need for card readers, terminals, or smartphones—just a smartwatch

• Instant settlement
  Payments arrive in real time via SEPA instant transfers

• Simplified setup
  Ideal for micro-merchants, freelancers, and on-the-go businesses

• Financial sovereignty
  Direct bank-to-bank transactions reduce dependency on intermediaries

In effect, the smartwatch becomes both a payment acceptance device and a gateway to open banking.

The Rise of QR and A2A Payments

This launch aligns with a broader shift toward QR-based and account-to-account payments globally.

While card payments still dominate in many Western markets, open banking frameworks—particularly in Europe—are accelerating alternatives that prioritize:

• Speed

• Cost efficiency

• Transparency

• Control over payment flows

Yowpay’s platform is designed to optimize payment routing across multiple channels, including QR codes and open banking flows, improving conversion rates while maintaining simplicity.

Where Huawei Fits In

Huawei’s role in this partnership highlights a strategic push to expand the capabilities of its wearable ecosystem beyond health and lifestyle tracking.

By integrating fintech functionality directly into devices like the Huawei Watch GT and Watch Ultimate series, the company is positioning wearables as tools for productivity and commerce—not just personal use.

This also reflects a broader industry trend: the convergence of consumer devices and financial infrastructure.

What Comes Next

While still early, smartwatch-based POS systems could open up entirely new use cases:

• Street vendors and pop-up retailers

• Event-based commerce

• Service professionals operating on-site

• Emerging markets with limited POS infrastructure

The success of this model will depend on adoption, regulatory alignment, and user trust—but the direction is clear.

Payments are becoming more embedded, more immediate, and increasingly invisible.

Conclusion

The Huawei–Yowpay collaboration marks a notable step toward wearable-first commerce.

By combining open banking with everyday devices, it removes friction from transactions and challenges the dominance of traditional payment systems.

If adoption scales, the future of payments may not sit in your pocket—or even your phone—but on your wrist.

The post Using Smartwatch POS Payments appeared first on Tech Trends.

2018 has been good for smart wearables, with an estimated 117 million devices to be sold by the end of the year according to CCS Insight. The analyst firm expects that figure to double to 233 million in 2022 with a market value of over $27 billion.

2018 has been a good year for smart wearables
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Leading the charge are smartwatches, with 85 million units expected to be sold in 2019, growing to 137 million in 2022. This forecast covers a wide range of smartwatches, including smart sports watches, smart analogue watches, smartwatches with built-in connected location trackers specifically designed for children, and smartwatches with cellular connectivity.

Smart hearables are another important wearable device category
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Smartwatches continue to gain in popularity, primarily thanks to the success of market leader Apple, which extended its product range with the launch of its Series 4 Apple Watch in September. The company is also offering the Apple Watch at the broadest range of prices so far, making it more accessible to iPhone owners.

Deeper analysis of the fitness tracker market signals solid demand in China even though demand in Western markets has stalled
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A key factor in this is increased engagement, as a recent smartwatch user survey conducted by CCS Insight found that more than 90 percent of respondents use their smartwatch most days.

“The combination of Apple’s success with its Watch and the high engagement levels we’re seeing among smartwatch owners reflects the value people are now placing on these products,” explains CCS Insight’s senior analyst for wearables, George Jijiashvili. “It’s a step change from a few years ago, when we consistently saw high levels of abandonment from early smartwatch users, who quickly became disenchanted with initial products”.

CCS Insight believes the high engagement among current smartwatch owners will provoke a wave of replacement sales in coming years. The company believes Apple is best positioned to take advantage of this, particularly with the latest update to the Apple Watch series. However, it also notes that growing awareness and satisfaction with smartwatches among technology enthusiasts will help to broaden the potential market, with wrist-worn wearables from new brands making progress.

“The Apple Watch has done well because it’s bought by iPhone owners. People with Android smartphones represent a far bigger market and we believe that conditions are right for the next wave of smartwatch adoption thanks to an ever-improving selection of smartwatches from fashion and consumer electronics brands hit the market,” says Jijiashvili.

The research firm notes that Fitbit’s smartwatches have seen solid uptake during 2018 and it is also positive about the opportunity for smartwatches powered by the recently revamped Wear OS from Google, particularly when combined with an updated technology platform from chipmaker Qualcomm.

“We’re hugely encouraged that established watchmakers such as Fossil are betting their future on a wide range of smartwatches for several fashion brands such as Diesel, Michael Kors and Skagen, and premium watchmakers such as Louis Vuitton, Montblanc and TAG Heuer continue to invest in this area. When you combine this with the renewed interest in smartwatches from leading smartphone makers such as Huawei and Samsung, you can see a groundswell of activity that signals a positive outlook for the market”.

The company believes that the growing proportion of cellular-enabled smartwatches also represents a great opportunity for mobile network operators:

“As cellular-enabled smartwatches take an increasing share of the market, operators have the chance to derive new revenue from the additional monthly fees they can charge users, particularly as the ability to offer one number on multiple devices continues to grow”. However, Jijiashvili cautions that “operators must ensure they don’t get greedy with the fees they charge to connect smartwatches or they risk dampening demand for the promising new product category”.

CCS Insight believes growing adoption of basic cellular-enabled watches, predominantly aimed at kids, is an important factor in the wearables market. The demand for these devices is especially strong in China and there are signs of interest in other regions, despite modest uptake so far, partly because of privacy concerns. However, several mobile operators beyond China are assessing the potential of these devices. A notable example is Vodafone, which now offers a range of wearable products as part of its V by Vodafone initiative; this range includes a smartwatch for children.

A recent user survey conducted by CCS Insight found that more than 90 percent of respondents use their smartwatch most days
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CCS Insight also notes the increasingly important role of Chinese supplier Huami. It expects Huami to make and sell more than 26 million devices with its own brands and with that of its partner Xiaomi in 2018. At present, most of these are fitness trackers, but more than 2 million units will be smart sports watches. Huami’s success has buoyed the worldwide fitness tracker market, which will record total sales of 43 million units in 2018, after a dip to 39 million in 2017.

“Deeper analysis of the fitness tracker market signals solid demand in China even though demand in Western markets has stalled. Fitbit, the brand synonymous with fitness trackers, has struggled to maintain its growth trajectory in fitness trackers but is hoping to offset this with the recent success of its smartwatch product line-up”.

Smart hearables are another important wearable device category CCS Insight highlights, predicting that the growing number of smart connected headphones will boost sales to 27 million in 2022.

“We’ve seen some excellent products in this area over the past year from companies like Bragi, Jabra, Samsung and Sony. It’s only a matter of time before Apple adds more functions to its AirPods, which will see them fall into our definition of smart hearables. If this happens, Apple could kick-start this device category like it shook up the smartwatch market with the Apple Watch,” Jijiashvili concludes

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio and @techtrends_tech on Twitter.

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A new epilepsy consortium believes technology could improve patient treatment and reduce NHS costs by £250 million a year.

Today, up to one in 100 people in the UK are believed to suffer from epilepsy, leading to three per cent of all Accident and Emergency visits and a total of 1.3 million days in hospital a year. It’s a challenging condition to manage, particularly as existing medication only works for up to 70 per cent of sufferers.

This approach has the potential to revolutionise the management of epilepsy by optimising the use of currently available treatments
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Up to one in 100 people in the UK are believed to suffer from epilepsy, leading to three per cent of all Accident and Emergency visits and a total of 1.3 million days in hospital a year
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Of those who do not respond to medication, most are not suitable for invasive surgery, leaving many to continue to experience unpredictable and potentially life-threatening seizures. New research by Public Health England (PHE) has found a 70% rise in the number of deaths of epilepsy patients between 2001 and 2014. PHE said there was a need to improve the clinical management of patients and make improvements to their wider health by tackling smoking, alcohol intake and poor diet.

The consortium estimates that it could significantly reduce costs to the NHS in treating epilepsy patients by as much as £250 million
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MyCareCentric patients reported a three-week reduction in response to seizure notification time and 30% fewer hospital admissions
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This is what myCareCentric Epilepsy consortium – funded by Innovate UK and comprised of Poole Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, the University of Kent, System C & Graphnet Care Alliance and Shearwater Systems – is hoping to do by equipping people with the ability to self-manage their condition. Running on Microsoft’s cloud platform Azure, the programme provides patients with wearable technology that records vital health data to help clinicians build a tailored record of a patient’s condition and seizure patterns. It has the potential to learn to classify seizures; to alert clinicians and carers in real-time so they can consult patients remotely; and provide essential lifestyle recommendations and drug prescriptions.

“For Epilepsy sufferers life can often feel uncontrollable and unpredictable. MyCareCentric is empowering patients to regain control of their treatment and their lives, helping them to significantly reduce the number of seizures they experience. As hospital Trusts across the UK continue to face growing pressures, it’s more important than ever to invest in the right tools that focus on the patient as a person rather than the condition, delivering the most effective care and the best outcomes for patients and their families,” says Suzy Foster, Director of Health at Microsoft UK.

Since launch in 2016, myCareCentric Epilepsy has seen extremely positive results, with patients reporting a three-week reduction in response to seizure notification time, an 80 per cent cut in the time taken for medical professionals to respond to individuals and 30 per cent fewer admissions to hospital. The programme is empowering patients with the data they need to manage and monitor their condition, with an understanding of the severity of their seizures. As a result of this reduction in seizures, the consortium estimates that it could significantly reduce costs to the NHS in treating epilepsy patients by as much as £250 million, as well as slash the number of outpatient appointments, easing up time for patient and medical professionals alike.

“This approach has the potential to revolutionise the management of epilepsy by optimising the use of currently available treatments,” says Dr Rupert Page, Chief Clinical Information Officer and Consultant Neurologist at Poole Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. “Simultaneously, the powerful insights gained from the much deeper awareness of the myriad of lifestyle and other factors which affect seizure frequency may open up entirely new areas of research or treatment. The timely, expert support that can be provided through this solution helps patients manage their own condition and restores to them some of the control that the diagnosis of epilepsy all too often takes away.”

In response to the success of the pilot, Microsoft and the consortium behind the solution recently launched a hack to gain insights into the data captured by the programme to help advance epilepsy treatments. Through this, they have confirmed relationships between lifestyle factors such as poor sleep and seizures, potentially enabling more accurate seizure prediction. Additionally, they found that even capturing seemingly innocuous background information could be useful in detecting seizures and improving patient outcomes.

“Putting data into secure Azure environments gives us huge scale and ability to leverage machine learning and artificial intelligence capabilities as services and ultimately to improve patient outcomes,” says Dr Jon Shaw, Director of Clinical Strategy at System C & Graphnet Care Alliance, explaining that this is a ‘first of type’ project that combines smart wearables, patient-facing applications and enterprise communication technology, which gets messages out to the care team in real time.

Now, the team are looking to expand the programme to more volunteers to empower them with the data they need to self-manage and understand epilepsy. They are also considering where it could drive new models of care for other conditions.

In response to the success of the pilot, Microsoft and the consortium behind the solution recently launched a hack to gain insights into the data captured by the programme to help advance epilepsy treatments
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Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio on Twitter.

The post Wearables Enabling Better Healthcare appeared first on Tech Trends.

I never really had a problem with traditional headphones until recently, when I started listening to music on my phone much more often (blame Amazon’s 80s radio) and dropped my handset several times by getting the cable tangled.

I never really had a problem with traditional headphones until recently
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If Apple has its way, we soon won't have any choice but to use Bluetooth
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So I thought it was time to give the latest generation of Bluetooth headsets a try, especially since – if Apple’s latest release is anything to go by – we soon won’t have much of a choice. Unless you want to try out this clever hack, that is*

Don't try this hilarious hack at home
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Ashley Chloe is Fashion Tech start-up base in San Francisco that makes fashionable wearables, and the Helix Cuff is their first flagship product. It’s a Bluetooth headset that slots into a magnetic bracelet, providing a sleek and stylish way of carrying your headphones around. When not in use, the connecting cord wraps into a groove in the wrist cuff, while the headphones go into a little cache covered by a mirror-polished stainless steel cap and the wireless receiver slots onto the other side. It takes a few tries to get the hang of it, but once you do it’s a matter of seconds to tuck away your headset in the cuff.

The Helix Cuff is a Bluetooth headset that slots into a magnetic bracelet
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“Fundamentally, the marriage of fashion and functional design to create a storage element for headphones simply didn’t exist,” said Mika Nenonen, chief designer of the Helix Cuff.

To tackle that problem, Founder and CEO Angela Pan assembled a team of top designers and engineers from Nokia, Google/Nest, and GoPro, and launched a crowdfunding campaign through Kickstaster. They raised 250% of the funding goal (over $260,000) from 2000 backers in 150 countries, and in September this year launched a consumer version of the Helix Cuff.

The Helix Cuff raised over 250% of its funding target on Kickstarter
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Their award-winning design is unisex and comes in various colours and finishes (white, black and bright red with metal embellishments in 18K plated-gold, champagne gold, or silver aluminium). It retails for $199  –  or $299 for the gold-plated edition.

The Helix allows you to connect up to two devices simultaneously, so that you can, for example, listen to streaming media content on your laptop or tablet while still being able to take hands-free calls on your phone. The battery on the headset lasts around 3 hours in use, and 200 hours in standby.

You can listen to music on your laptop or tablet and switch seamlessly to taking calls on your mobile.
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The headset worked brilliantly with older phones
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But as cool as it is to test-drive the latest fashion wearables straight from San Francisco (yes I love my job, although it doesn’t quite make me want to dance around in the street like the protagonists of this video), what really sells this to me is the fact that my in-laws – both in their 60s and not easily impressed by gadgets – ended up “stealing” it. The headset worked really well with both their phones – which weren’t exactly the latest models – and they loved the fact that they could listen to their music, audiobooks and radio plays without being tangled in endless cables.

Their only criticism was that the cord for the headphones was a bit too short, but I explained that this was probably because it’s designed to keep the microphone relatively close to your mouth. I then reassured them that it was unlikely that microphone would be used to spy on them (but, then again…) They are most definitely not Siri users (and to be honest neither am I) but for fans of that sort of thing the Helix Cuff is voice-command enabled.

Here are some of the key features and technical specs. It does come with full instructions of course, although I flatter myself that I didn’t quite need all of those…

• Bluetooth 4.1 powered by CSR and Qualcomm chipset.
• Up to 30 feet working distance.
• aptX® technology: provides CD-like high-quality stereo audio.
• Smart multipoint connectivity: simultaneous paired with two devices, i.e. stream music from the laptop/tablet, and take calls from the smartphone. Memorize up to 8 devices at a time.
• cVc® noise reduction technology: increase voice quality, reduce background noise.
• Powerful speakers:
  • Frequency response: 50Hz-20kHz
  • Impedance: 16 ohms
  • Total harmonic distortion (THD): <1%
• Battery life: up to 3 hours

*DON’T actually try this hack, it’s a prank in case you haven’t figured that one out.

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio and @techtrends_tech on Twitter.

The post Product Review: Helix Cuff appeared first on Tech Trends.

We meet some of the entrepreneurs combining beautiful design with technology to make the world a better place.

Art and science have never been separate. Now a new breed of polymath is embracing a combination of the creative and analytical to form meaningful connections between people and their environment. We meet the digital age Renaissance artists making a tangible impact through beautiful objects and experiences.

Smog Free Tower

For Daan Roosegaarde true beauty is clean air. His company, Studio Roosegaarde, previously worked on a variety of life-improving projects – such as light emitting bicycle paths and smart highways – before Beijing’s smog inspired him to create a ‘clean air temple’ in the city.

The Smog Free Tower, which opened in Beijing in September 2016, cleans 30,000 cubic metres of air every hour using just 1,170 watts of energy – roughly the same as it takes to power an average water boiler.

The extracted smog particles are compressed into solid materials that get turned into design objects, such as cufflinks and rings. With each sale of Smog Free Jewellery, another 1,000 cubic metres of clean air gets donated to the city. “I think it’s part of a movement of new design which is not about chairs, lamps and tables but more about how to improve life,” explained Roosegaarde.

Art and science have never been separate. Now a new breed of polymath is embracing a combination of the creative and analytical to form meaningful connections between people and their environment
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The project will now travel through several more cities in China, promoting the “dream of clean air” and looking for new collaborations with local universities and industry to develop further innovations such as bicycles that suck up polluted air and clean it as they go.

“It’s about making people part of the solution,” explains Roosegaarde. “To create real urban change you need a bottom-up approach where engaged citizens come up with their own solutions.”

DuoSkin

These striking gold leaf tattoos are actually customised wearables which communicate wirelessly with mobile devices and collect data directly from your skin. DuoSkin ‘talks’ using NFC tags, each made from a chip connected to a coil. Researchers at MIT Media Lab and Microsoft Research found a way to fabricate this using gold leaf, which can be customised to various shapes and sizes and has the advantage of being cheap, skin-friendly and robust.

“We’re aiming to celebrate the personalisation of individual style that is often missing in today’s wearable technology,” said Cindy Hsin-Liu Kao, the researcher leading the project. “Through the user-friendly fabrication process, we enable people to design and create their own skin technology”

Once applied, DuoSkin can be used to control a variety of mobile devices in close proximity to the body. “We created on-skin input elements that resemble traditional user interfaces, such as buttons, sliders, and 2D trackpads,” added Hsin-Liu Kao. These jewel-like transfers give us a glimpse into the future of human-machine symbiosis, where devices will blend seamlessly with our bodies, creating an increasingly intimate relationship between user and technology.

These gold leaf tattoos are customised wearables that communicate wirelessly with mobile devices and collect data from your skin.
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SensioAIR

Three people die every day in the UK due to asthma, but many allergy outbreaks could be avoided if people had the right information and advice.

After years of struggling with their own allergies and asthma, Lebanese entrepreneurs Cyrille Najjar and Eve Tamraz developed SensioAIR, an air quality sensor that identifies harmful particles in the air. The device connects to an app – currently in beta testing on iOS and Android – that helps people understand symptoms and manage them in real time.

Three people die every day in the UK due to asthma, but many allergy outbreaks could be avoided if people had the right information and advice
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The technology brings together Eve’s neuroscience and synthetic biology background with Cyrille’s experience as a designer and professor of prototyping at University College London. The husband-and-wife team co-founded their company – White Lab – in 2015 and raised more than $3.5 million in investment to develop the technology. The NHS alone spends around £1 billion a year treating around 5.4 million asthma patients.

Lechal

Nearly 70 million people in India are visually impaired. When living in Bangalore in 2010, Anirudh Sharma experienced this first hand: “I used to see a lot of visually-challenged people, and my motivation was to bring something to them that would be truly useful,” he explained.

His Lechal system fits a haptic insole to the inside of a shoe, which is connected to an Android app integrated with Google Maps. Users are guided to their destination by a series of vibrations, which build in intensity as the wearer nears points where they have to turn. A proximity sensor in the front of the shoe also alerts them of obstacles, leaving their hands and hearing free to avoid dangers such as traffic.

The Lechal system fits a haptic insole to the inside of a shoe, which is connected to an Android app integrated with Google Maps. Users are guided to their destination by a series of vibrations
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The initial goal was to help the visually impaired, but Lechal is now being marketed to “directionally challenged” users as well. The device – which will cost $180 when it goes on sale in November – allows people to use navigation tools such as Google Maps without constantly checking their smartphone. As well as being convenient, this brings the added advantage of making users less vulnerable to collision and theft, both of which are more likely when carrying your phone in your hand. Part of the sale proceeds will also go towards subsidising kits for blind users who are unable to purchase the full-price devices.

Ocean Cleanup Project

If you try to fight the ocean, you will lose
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In 2013 Boyan Slat dropped out of his aerospace engineering course to pursue another ambition: clearing the world’s oceans of harmful plastic debris. The Dutch inventor and entrepreneur was only 18 at the time, but now – at the grand old age of 21 – he’s well on his way to making it happen. Having crowdfunded more than $2 million for the Ocean Cleanup Project, Slat currently heads a team of around 50 engineers and researchers from the operation’s headquarters in Delftin the Netherlands.

“If you try to fight the ocean, you will lose,” he said. So instead of going after plastic debris with vessels and nets, the idea is to leverage nature itself to drive the clean-up process. The Ocean Cleanup Project designed a network of extremely long floating barriers that remain stationary in the water, using the ocean’s natural currents to concentrate the plastic towards collection points.

The debris is then recycled and sold, with proceeds going towards making the operation self-sustaining. The first working prototype is currently being tested in the North Sea, and full deployment is scheduled for 2020.

Instead of going after plastic debris with vessels and nets, the idea is to leverage nature itself to drive the clean-up process
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Article originally published on Wired

From smog-eating towers to ocean-cleaning barriers, how design is inspiring innovation #WIRED2016https://t.co/NY4NVRYXyd pic.twitter.com/UFneb7KcSf

— Wired UK (@WiredUK) November 1, 2016

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio and @techtrends_tech on Twitter.

The post Meet the Digital Age Renaissance Artists appeared first on Tech Trends.

Vodafone is developing smart beachwear and luggage using IoT technology.

Vacationing is something most of us look forward to all year, and chances are that you’ll be headed for the beach this summer for some much-needed R&R.

Vodafone is developing a suite of connected IoT holiday devices
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But holidays can be really stressful. Your luggage gets lost; the kids wander off; you forget the sun cream, and before you know it your skin turns a healthy shade of beetroot.*

That’s where Vodafone thinks technology can help. The company announced that it developed a proof-of-concept suite of holiday essentials using connected Internet of Things (IoT) technology. This includes ‘a Smart Summer’ bikini and men’s swim shorts equipped with UV sensors that track exposure to sunlight throughout the day, and notifies you – either through a smartphone app or via a small vibrating alert built into the waistband and strap of the outfits – when you’ve had too much exposure to those harmful rays.

Can IoT technology help alleviate holiday-related stress?
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UV sensors embedded in your swimwear warn you when you've been out in the sun too long
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Embedded tracking devices send parents alerts if their child wanders off
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That same tracking technology was also applied to suitcases, which could cut down on the annoyance experienced by nearly 30% of European holiday-makers who reported having lost luggage issues during their travels, and finding the best carry-on luggage can be a challenge in itself.

Why is Vodafone designing trunks and bikinis?
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It works by combining three separate tracking methods and low-power Bluetooth technology for near-range tracking, showing the user’s proximity to the child’s sun hat or suitcase using a ‘hotter’ or ‘colder’ graphical representations on the smartphone app.

But why is Vodafone designing bikinis and trunks all of a sudden, you may well ask?

It’s all part of a bigger trend towards connecting real objects with data. We’re soon going to see a rollout of low-cost, low-power ‘Narrowband IoT’ devices (think battery lives of 10+ years) which will radically transform and permeate every aspect of our lives. Recent research indicates that more than half of consumer technology companies intended to bring new IoT products and services to market within the next two years.

By next year we will be experiencing a new wave of low-cost, low-power IoT Devices coming to market
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Those connected devices, in turn, will all plug into the mobile networks that telecoms giants such as Vodafone provide, so they’re keen to accelerate the process by demonstrating the mass market potential applications of this technology in everyday consumer devices. The company claims that its global IoT networks will be able to support more than one million such devices per square kilometre simultaneously.

“Companies in every industry are already embracing IoT technologies and see these as critical to their future,” says Vodafone Group Director of IoT Erik Brenneis. “The launch of new Narrowband IoT networks next year will take this remarkable revolution to a whole new level.”

So maybe by next summer we will actually be seeing such designs in the shops. In the meantime though, watch those kids and remember to pack the factor 50. Happy summer!

* A Pan-European Vodafone and YouGov online survey found that almost half of Europeans (48%) forget to apply sunscreen, and 76% said they would be more likely to cover up they received an automated alert about it.

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio and @techtrends_tech on Twitter.

The post Your Summer Holidays Are About to Get A Whole Lot Smarter appeared first on Tech Trends.

Personalised healthcare is likely to transform the way we prevent and treat diseases in the future as IoT and Wearables become increasingly pervasive.

Personalised healthcare will transform how we prevent and treat diseases
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With smart monitoring devices already integrating seamlessly into our routines, companies are now looking at the best way to harness the wealth of data that they collect for research purposes.

Tech companies are looking to harness data for research purposes
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Personalised medicine was worth over $1 billion in 2014 and the market is expected to double by 2022
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Apple’s ResearchKit is one such initiative, giving researchers direct access to relevant data for their studies (daily step counts, heart rate, calorie use, etc.) and offering developers an open source framework that integrates seamlessly with HealthKit to allow them to create their own medical research apps.

Apple’s ResearchKit gives researchers direct access to relevant data for their studies
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In the two years since its launch, the kit has already proven useful for clinical trials, with hundreds of thousands of people contributing data for studies ranging from diabetes to epilepsy, melanoma, asthma and breast cancer.

Apple ResearchKit kit has already proven useful for clinical trials
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It’s surprising it took big pharma companies so long to get on board
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It’s somewhat surprising, then, that it has taken big pharma companies so long to get on board. Recently, however, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) announced that it was launching a new research app on the platform to help monitor rheumatoid arthritis patients.

GSK’s PARADE (Patient Rheumatoid Arthritis Data from the Real World) study aims to tackle this debilitating disease by learning from patient insights and therapeutic goals. They are currently seeking volunteers (aged over 21 and diagnosed with RA) to monitor their health and share those insights into how RA affects their lives.

A GSK study will collect data from Rheumatoid Arthritis patients using iPhone sensors
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This data will be collected through a mixture of surveys and iPhone sensors which will track common RA symptoms such as fatigue, joint pain and overall mood. The study will not provide diagnosis or treatment, but will allow patients to view their own study data and learn more about their condition.

The PARADE study will track 300 patients over a three-month period
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The study will track 300 patients over a three-month period. GSK believes that collecting data from mobile devices in this way will in future help to alleviate the burden on patients by reducing the need for frequent doctor visits during clinical studies. More broadly, as sensors – and even implants – become increasingly sophisticated, doctors will be able to accurately monitor patient progress continuously and much more efficiently, with minimum intrusion upon their daily routine.

The prospects are exciting, not only from a quality of life perspective, but considering the personalized medicine market was valued at over USD 1 billion in 2014 and is expected to more than double by 2022.

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio and @techtrends_tech on Twitter.

The post Will Apple’s ResearchKit Be a Game Changer for HealthTech? appeared first on Tech Trends.