You have to know to grow – Smart Clothing!
I am a lucky man! This year for my birthday, my wife has bought me an Apple Watch.
This is not my first wearable technology device. Years ago I was an avid user of the Nike Fuel Band. My motivation for purchasing the Nike Fuel Band, back in the day, was to visually see and be conscious of my steps taken and calories burned during my recovery from my first ACL surgery. The Nike Fuel Band was a huge motivator for me and I am sure the Apple Watch will be even a greater motivator.
Not to take away from the excitement of the Apple Watch but I can’t help being excited for the future lineup of smart clothing that records your body’s electrical signals, records the data and provides feedback.
There is not doubt that the wristband and watch market is still dominating in the category of wearable technology but quickly gaining momentum with ever advancing technology is the apparel sector.
Some of the functions of smart clothing include the ability to track and record calories burned, temperature, heart rate, breathing rate, it will also measure your performance, monitor your sleep and alert you when you are becoming dehydrated. Smart clothing for medical-level monitoring is not yet as widespread but as this technology advances, it will potentially revolutionize health monitoring for patients and clinicians in terms of patient monitoring.
Imagine being told in real time to “breathe deeper” avoid the movement you just did to avoid injury, alert you if you are about to have a stroke, forewarn you to not over exert yourself or alert you do drink fluids because you are dehydrated.
The most impressive smart clothing I have seen so far is the Ralph Lauren Polo Tech Shirt illustrated above.
The advancement in technology for smart clothing is something that will certainly advance exponentially over the next couple of years.
We know the technology now exists for smart clothing. I just hope that the data is more useful compared to the previous wearable devices. It’s great to see if you have met your calorie expenditure for the day, ran far enough, fast enough, but I would like to see the data actually being useful so that we can live healthier and more informed life.
I am sure as technology advances smart clothing will provide feedback to us and let us know if we need to push harder, count our reps, pay attention to muscle imbalances and more importantly prevent one of our limbs from moving beyond its maximum range of motion and save our tendons, muscles and bones from spraining, tearing or breaking.