At the Voice of the Body event few hours back, Samsung announced Simband, an open hardware reference design for wearable technology, that has most advanced sensing technologies that could be used to track measurements such as heart rate, respiratory rate and blood pressure using the wrist-mounted band that has a modular array of sensors on the bottom. The Simband is being designed in a modular way, allowing for innovation in areas like battery life, form factor and noninvasive sensor technology, says Samsung.
This also includes Samsung Architecture for Multimodal Interactions (SAMI), a cloud-based open software platform that stores the collected health data from the wearable device securely. This enables developers access the data and leverage it to create entirely new applications. Since it has open APIs, it can collect data from any type of device or online source and deliver it to any other device or application in real time.
Other manufacturers would use the Simband reference design to develop products and it will not be sold commercially, says Samsung. Looks like it might take time before we can see a wearable device based on this platform.