B-Secur at the heart of empowering consumers

Ben Carter, CCO, provides insight on empowering consumers to take control of their heart health and how B-Secur’s partnership with TI plays a key role in supporting this.

When speaking at a major health conference in Sweden, Healthcare Futurist, Koen Kas said: “It’s time to move from reactive sick-care to proactive healthcare by default.”

Kas wasn’t a lone voice. Two months prior to the conference in 2019, Deloitte published an article entitled, The Future of Health in which it said health is likely to revolve around sustaining well-being rather than responding to illness.

“Not only will consumers have access to detailed information about their own health, but they will also own their health data and play a central role in making decisions about their health and well-being.”

The Deloitte article did suggest that this transformation could happen ‘significantly before’ 2040. But, despite a growing sea change in the last number of years, few would have foreseen the major and rapid revolution we have more recently witnessed, in healthcare.

Empowering consumers with control of their health & wellness
The Covid-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on our lives, striking harder, faster, and deeper than anyone could ever have imagined. But major disruption often brings forward opportunities for technology, especially when change is being driven by necessity.

The past 16 months has seen remote working become embedded in office culture and videoconferencing calls go from an almost unheard of means of communication to vital ways to conduct business. We made work conform to our needs.

In the same way, consumers want to be empowered to manage their own health and there’s no going back to pre-covid times when visits to bricks and mortar consultation rooms were the most precise way of monitoring your health.

Consumers are also much more focused on wellness as a result of the pandemic. When the world locked down, people were forced to focus on the simpler things in life. We took solace in our daily exercise routines and set aside time for activities which supported our mental and physical health. As we emerge from the pandemic these lifestyle choices are becoming embedded in our daily lives. Just look at the increase in sign-ups for home work-out company Peloton which have grown by 170% in a year to bring revenues to $607million.

Leading research and advisory company, Gartner predicts global spending on wearable consumer devices will reach $81.5billion in 2021, an 18.1% increase from $69billion in 2020. Gartner claims a significant factor driving market growth is the increased interest in health monitoring during the pandemic.

Addressing heart health is vital
Covid-19 has caused irreparable cardiac damage and arrhythmias in people with no underlying heart issues, making heart health and remote monitoring a key priority for consumers.

No one is totally immune to heart problems, as was evidenced at the UEFA European Football Championships when supremely fit footballer, Christian Eriksen suffered a cardiac arrest on the pitch in front of shocked fans in the stadium and millions of people worldwide. Thankfully Christian was surrounded by world class medics and survived this horrific ordeal.

The starter’s pistol has been fired in the race to put medical grade wellness and health insights into the hands of the consumer, empowering them to make the right lifestyle changes. But imagine if Usain Bolt ran the first part of this race for you, leaving you with just the final straight to negotiate?

B-Secur collaborates with Texas Instruments
It is against this backdrop and hot on the heels of our announcement in February that we received US FDA clearance for our HeartKey® software that we launch an EKG/ECG solution that will accelerate the design of next-generation consumer wearables.

The solution is based on the Texas Instruments (TI) AFE4950 analog front end (AFE) for photoplethysmography (PPG) and EKG sensing. The integration provides high-performing sensing capabilities for wearable devices like premium smartwatches and Wi-Fi-connected optical heart-rate monitors, and enables advanced features for identification, wellness, and health monitoring in Internet of Things (IoT) devices.

It is the industry’s first solution with a fully integrated EKG and PPG signal chain that allows for synchronous sampling of cardiac activity with dry electrodes used in battery-operated products. For those companies in the race to put heart health in the hands of consumers, it enables them to eliminate months of R&D with a fully integrated sensor, electrical and signal processing solution. The finishing line just got a lot closer for manufacturers.

At B-Secur we’re on a ‘EKG Everywhere’ mission. We want to bring this cardiac monitoring bio-signal, which until now was typically only available in hospitals, into everyday devices.

Our collaboration with Texas Instruments is a key strategic development for B-Secur as it means our customers around the world can bring their own consumer wearable products to market quicker and with greater confidence. We’re looking forward to seeing how this exciting race develops.

Read the full press release.

Read more about our EKG/ECG solution based on the Texas Instruments (TI) AFE4950 analog front end.