[Editorial] Innovation, Connectivity, Collaboration Pave the Way for a Deeper Understanding of Yourself With Samsung Wellness
Next week, Samsung will share its latest lineup of innovative products designed to enhance users’ everyday lives, including updates that empower fitness and wellness routines. Ahead of the unveiling, we’d like to take the time to reflect our philosophy, achievements and progress that we have made as we approach our most recent step in our health journey.
The world has entered a new era of wellness, seeing a growing desire for a more nuanced understanding of overall health. In the past, health was a simple concept with a single definition. Now, everyone defines health and wellness by what it means to them. To accommodate everyone’s health goals, Samsung is committed to ensuring everyone has access to the resources they need, so they can work towards the best version of themselves.
To that end, we are focused on setting new standards for health experiences through our Galaxy Watch series and across our broader product portfolio. We have established three key pillars to help people reach their own goals: sensor innovation, connected wellness and industry collaboration.
Advanced Sensors for More Meaningful Insights
To create healthier habits and reach goals, it’s important we know ourselves better. For our users, this journey starts with Samsung’s groundbreaking BioActive Sensor. The BioActive Sensor delivers accurate and comprehensive health data and provides actionable insights and guidance users can leverage during their health and wellness journey.
First introduced with the Galaxy Watch4, the BioActive Sensor uses a unique single chip that combines three powerful health sensors — Optical Heart Rate (PPG), Electrical Heart Signal (ECG) and Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis (BIA) — into one compact unit. Its streamlined design enhances performance and fits comfortably for increased accuracy and 24/7 usage. This helps users deepen their understanding, encourages action and strengthens good habits to help them achieve their goals.
Our sensor provides insights across all aspects of health, but we’d like to highlight two key areas: sleep and body composition. Sleep is often an afterthought when establishing a solid wellness routine, but it is essential for holistic health. At Samsung, we’re serious about helping our community get better sleep. We’ve introduced various sleep quality tracking tools and launched a tailored sleep coaching program all aimed to help users get a more restful night’s sleep.
When it comes to fitness, in particular, everyone’s goals are different. That’s why BioActive Sensor also measures body composition, which deepens users’ knowledge of their physical health, far beyond merely losing weight. The sensor sends microcurrents to measure weight maintained, skeletal muscle gained, body fat lost and body water levels, relative to goals set, helping users hit targets and keep track of what matters to them.
Across these advancements, we remain intensely committed to the secure and private collection of data to give our users peace of mind during their wellness journeys. All health data is encrypted and secured on the device itself and guarded by Knox, ensuring users’ information remains isolated from unauthorized sources.
Wellness That Spans All Devices
We are also providing tools that allow consumers to track overall health and wellness — whether they’re at home, in the gym, or on the road. The Samsung Health app, with more than 200 million active global users, is at the center of Samsung’s health experience across an extensive range of devices, from smartwatches to smartphones to tablets and even TVs. The app — a holistic health hub that consolidates fitness, wellness and health monitoring capabilities — records and compiles all kinds of health data and activity information, presents them intuitively and gives guidance on how to leverage that data to maximize results. The collected information is comprehensive, easy-to-understand and encourages positive action.
More connected devices mean a more seamless and enhanced user experience. While following guided workout or meditation programs on Samsung Smart TVs or Galaxy Tabs at home, for example, your calorie count and heart rate are tracked on your Galaxy Watch but viewed on the larger screen for easier access. Your Galaxy Watch also recognizes when you fall asleep and automatically dims lights and turns off air conditioners in response.
Open Collaboration Means Better Health Experiences
To give our users the best experience possible, we partner with other leaders in technology and wellness. We have built a strong foundation with our technology, and we welcome collaboration on our open ecosystem — one that often serves as an incubator for exciting new applications, services and features. In collaboration with Google, we co-developed Wear OS and Health Connect so that more users can join the unified platform and take advantage of new services and solutions to meet everyone’s needs.
Samsung works extensively with third-party experts, research centers and universities to further advance wearable tracking and insight capabilities, including the National Sleep Foundation for sleep, the University of California San Diego Sleep Laboratory and the University of California, San Francisco Hypoxia Research Laboratory for sleep and blood oxygen research and Louisiana State University, Pennington Biomedical Research Center and the University of Hawaii Cancer Center for BIA research, to name a few. We’re also committed to researching new ways our health solutions can be used in the medical field. In the coming months, we’re focused on developing more tools and resources that will support the medical community and give our users a more holistic view of their health records.
The Promising Future of Health and Wellness
In the last few years, many people around the world have adopted new habits and interests. For many, these include a greater awareness of physical, mental and sleep health. To meet this demand, Samsung is excited to continue expanding our Galaxy Watch lineup to better cater to the many unique needs of our users — especially those with a passion for the outdoors.
Our work, however, does not stop there. We are constantly innovating and investing in research and development and exploring new ways to work with our trusted partners. Through open collaboration and focused innovation, we will ensure our users are equipped with advanced technologies that empower them to better understand their own minds and bodies for a truly integrated, holistic experience of health and wellness.
We can’t wait for you to see what’s next. Please be sure to tune in to Galaxy Unpacked on August 10 at 6:30pm IST on Samsung Newsroom India.
by TaeJong Jay Yang
EVP and Head of Health R&D Team at Mobile eXperience Business, Samsung Electronics