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Armband monitor measures extreme situations
SenseWear Armband
BodyMedia
Astro Teller
Bob Karlovits can be reached via e-mail or at 412-320-7852.
The installation of the final bit of equipment for the trip took place Monday, when Dr. Bret Goodpaster strapped armbands on the explorers.
"You wouldn't buy a car without a dashboard," says Teller, chief executive officer of BodyMedia, on Smithfield Street. "But there is no dashboard for our own bodies."
BodyMedia makes the SenseWear Armband, a light, small piece of equipment worn on the upper arm near a curve in the body that makes it free-moving and virtually unnoticeable.
The first readings from the armbands will take place today.
The armband has been used by members of the Pittsburgh Steelers, National Guardsmen and city firemen to measure efforts in training functions, Teller says.
"But this is an undertaking in extreme conditions, measuring people with medical conditions doing extreme things in extreme conditions," Teller says.
Cross and Petersen have been on the NovoLog Ultimate Walk to Cure Diabetes since Nov. 18. Sunday, they rendezvoused with Cross' father, Mike, of England, and Goodpaster, a Pitt exercise physiologist who is doing diabetes research on the trip.
The addition of the SenseWear Armbands was planned all along. It is being added now only because it would have "created a burden" had it been used earlier, Goodpaster says.
Although the armbands are wireless in their communication with computers or other monitoring devices, he says, their use would have meant the explorers would have needed to carry more equipment.
"They would have had to have a laptop to download the data — and I will have that," Goodpaster said in a satellite phone hookup from Antarctica.
Through the measurement of various body functions — heart rates, sweat, heat, galvanic skin response — the monitors measure energy expenditure, distance traveled, time rested, duration of activity, steps taken and duration of sleep.
Teller points out that the device detects much more than less-expensive monitors that measure activity mostly by motion — and don't examine non-active events.
Arthur George, assistant chief of the Pittsburgh Fire Bureau, says the bureau put the armbands through some tests in an effort to measure stress. He says they "have a lot of potential" and wants to do further tests.
Ideally, he says, using the monitors in real-life situations as opposed to training sessions would lead to the results the bureau wants.
"There is no way you can measure stress, and the monitor helps you do that," he says. "It also does a lot of things with body heat that could give you a way to see when a person needs rest."
The armband is the heart of the existence of BodyMedia, a firm that has been around for 11/2 years after growing from Sandbox Advanced Development.
Sandbox tried to create commerce and consumer-oriented ideas for electronics-oriented companies such as Intel and Motorola, Teller says.
The company was created by Teller; Ivo Stivoric, chief technology officer; Chris Pacione, vice president of interactive design and corporate communications; and Chris Kasabach, vice president of mechanical and industrial design.
The firm employs 20 people at its Downtown headquarters, and the armbands are put together in Cheswick.
Teller says BodyMedia does not market the devices in a commercial sense, but rather provides them to institutions and organizations such as Pitt studying activity such as the Novolog walk.
As a result, he adds, it is impossible to estimate their cost. Institutions getting them would probably pay a rate depending on the number acquired or time used, he says.
But, he says, BodyMedia is working with a commercial company on the development of an armband aimed at the commercial market.
"I would say, at about this time next year, you will see one available at Wal-Mart level," he says.
The thrust of the armband idea was to create understanding and allow management of human physical activity, Teller says.
"Imagine where weight-control companies would go if there were no more scales," he says. "But we can't measure pain and stress. If you can't measure it, you can't manage it."
