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CONSUMER NOTICE Fitbit, in conjunction with the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), announced a voluntary recall of Fitbit Ionic smartwatches, which the company introduced in 2017 and stopped producing in 2020. The battery in the Ionic smartwatch can overheat, posing a burn hazard. The health and safety of Fitbit users is our highest priority. We are taking this action out of an abundance of caution for our users. We will offer a refund to Fitbit Ionic customers. This voluntary recall is specific to Fitbit Ionic devices. It does not impact any other Fitbit smartwatches or trackers. If you own...

A new smart sensor has been unveiled which can turn any face mask into a Fitbit-style health monitoring device. The FaceBit, or 'Fitbit for the face', is a quarter-sized sensor which attaches to a face mask using a small magnet and tracks a user's respiration rate, heart rate, how long they have been wearing the mask, and if the mask has begun to leak. Designed with the medical community in mind, it can be used by anyone to monitor their health, especially as many states and cities across the US continue their mask mandates. The lightweight device can even be...

Fitbit data significantly improved detection of influenza-like illness (ILI) in US patients, according to a study published in The Lancet. Acute infections can cause individuals to have higher-than-normal resting heart rates (RHR), increased sleep duration and frequency, and a decline in activity levels, all of which can be measured using wearable technology. Because an increasing number of people are using personal activity monitors, researchers assessed whether population trends data from one wearable device, Fitbit, may help improve real-time influenza surveillance and limit the potential impact of the disease. The investigators obtained de-identified heart rate and sleep activity data from 200,000...

It’s practically a foregone conclusion that everyone uses Google in one way or another. Now the company’s reach has expanded even further, acquiring Fitbit in December for a whopping $2.1 billion. Google products are in our homes, its software is on our phones, and its search engine answers over three billion queries per day. Even the word “google” itself has become a fixture in the American lexicon. The tech giant has become so ubiquitous, its influence so massive, that it’s safe to say Google’s effect on public discourse is unparalleled in modern society. Once a mere search engine, the tech...

Search giant is amassing health records from Ascension facilities in 21 states; patients not yet informed Google is engaged with one of the country’s largest health-care systems to collect and crunch the detailed personal health information of millions of Americans across 21 states.The initiative, code-named “Project Nightingale,” appears to be the largest in a series of efforts by Silicon Valley giants to gain access to personal health data and establish a toehold in the massive health-care industry. Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc. and Microsoft Corp. are also aggressively pushing into health care, though they haven’t yet struck deals of this scope.Google began the effort in secret last year with...

John Hancock, one of the oldest and largest North American life insurers, will stop underwriting traditional life insurance and instead sell only interactive policies that track fitness and health data through wearable devices and smartphones, the company said on Wednesday. The move by the 156-year-old insurer, owned by Canada's Manulife Financial Corp, marks a major shift for the company, which unveiled its first interactive life insurance policy in 2015. It is now applying the model across all of its life coverage. Interactive life insurance, pioneered by John Hancock's partner the Vitality Group, is already well-established in South Africa and Britain...

The search for a missing University of Iowa student entered its eighth day on July 26, with investigators examining technology, including her FitBit, while continuing a ground search around the area where she was last seen. Mollie Tibbetts, 20, vanished from Brooklyn, Iowa, where she was dog-sitting at her boyfriend’s brother’s house. She was last seen jogging on the evening of Wednesday, July 18, and sent messages from her phone to her boyfriend and mother later that night. She was reported missing after she didn’t show up for work at a daycamp on July 19. Authorities have said they are...

ELLINGTON, Conn. (WTNH) — Court papers show a popular fitness tracker called a Fitbit is a key piece of evidence in an Ellington murder case. Richard Dabate, 40, was charged earlier this month with killing his wife, Connie, in December of 2015. Court papers just released show data from Connie’s Fitbit, which records things like motion and heart rate. Connie’s Fitbit disproved Richard’s timeline of an intruder killing his wife. Richard told police his wife was killed in a home invasion by a tall, obese man with a deep voice. Police say Dabate had a pregnant mistress.

Millions of Americans are embracing health and fitness tracking devices — such as Fitbit and the new Apple Watch — to boost their health and wellness. But a new study suggests a potential downside of the new med-tech devices: Employers may begin to require them for some workers to hold down rising healthcare costs. MarketWatch reports that millions of the devices are expected to be introduced into the workplace by 2018 as employers adopt incentivized wellness programs to tackle rising health care costs, according to a study by Verizon Enterprise Solutions. “Tracker information will become part of your health record,”...

Is this interactive tattoo the future of 'wearable' technology? Fitbit makers plan interactive inking implanted in the skin The future of 'wearable' technology may be a sub-dermal tattoo currently called 'Project Underskin,' it may be on the market in the next five years •It will be implanted into the skin with a visible tattoo in the thumb's knuckle and a larger, invisible tattoo in the palm •The tattoo would interact with everything the person touches •The tattoo would be able to unlock doors, monitor vitality, protect credit card information and more