February 04, 2020

We went to CES and these were the wellness trends that caught our eye

We ventured out to Las Vegas, Nevada for CES 2020 and learned all about what the future looks like for wellness technology.  CES, or Consumer Electronics Show, is a trade show put on every year by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA). CES’ website describes it as the “world's gathering place for all those who thrive on the business of consumer technologies” and “the proving ground for innovators and breakthrough technologies for 50 years.”  This was Embr’s third year at CES, and it provided us with another exceptional opportunity to connect with other tech companies and show all the work we’ve been doing here at Embr Labs.  We also had the chance to see what trends are coming up in wellness technology as we move into 2020 and the new decade. Here’s what we thought was pretty cool: We’re tracking everything now At CES this year, one of the biggest questions we got was: “what does the Wave track?” Part of the reason we got this question so much was that Embr Wave isn’t like anything else out there on the market (if we do say so ourselves), but largely, it was reflective of a huge trend that took over CES 2020- wearables that gather new data about your health.  The smart wearables market is booming - by 2022, it’s estimated to be worth $27 billion, double its 2018 value. In November, Google parent company Alphabet threw it’s weight behind FitBit, purchasing the health tracking pioneer for about $2.1 billion.  Since Apple released the Apple Watch in 2014, smartwatches have evolved from more than just mini smartphones. Due to rapidly advancing technology and the desire to create affordable, accessible, and non-invasive health solutions, smart wearables have become ideal avenues for at-home, personalized health care.  Looking forward to new health trackers, one of the next big things for wearables is blood pressure tracking. Blood pressure measurements are traditionally done by an inflated cuff, which usually requires going to a physician’s office and is a large, bulky setup that can often feel uncomfortable to use.  That’s where the H2-BP comes in, a wearable blood pressure monitor that places a pump inside of a fitness tracker. Not much larger than a FitBit, the device takes pressure readings throughout the day from the radial artery.  Data is then sent to the companion app where you can read up-to-date readings as well as identify and analyze trends over time.  H2CARE, the company behind the device, says that they should be able to get FDA approval as early as March, which would be huge. Another big-ticket item for future health trackers is non-invasive glucose monitoring. With 29 Americans living with diabetes having to draw blood on a daily basis, it’s no wonder why tech companies are searching for a way to make that process easier. While no devices have been FDA approved to do this, the Glutrac from Add Care is currently taking a shot at it. The Hong Kong-based company hopes to measure glucose levels from optical monitors alone. Sam, Jake, and Heather, sporting trendy tracksuits given to us by our friends at AARP, who helped support our trip to CES after we won their Innovation in Aging Award last Fall. Alternative meat goes beyond burgers At CES 2019, Impossible Foods debuted the Impossible Burger 2.0. The meat substitute patty that looks, feels and bleeds like real beef became a standout at the conference and is now available at chain restaurants including Burger King, Red Robin, and The Cheesecake Factory. This year, the leading food technology company captivated CES again with another kind of Impossible meat - Impossible Pork.  Designed for kosher and halal certification, the man-made pork substitute is meant to be used as a replacement in any recipe that calls for ground pork. Impossible Foods plans to roll out the release of the Impossible Sausage over the coming months. Like it’s plant-based predecessor, the major protein source in Impossible Pork is soy, and it’s major fat sources come from coconut and sunflower oil. It also includes amino acids, vitamins and sugars, as well as heme, an iron-containing compound found in all living organisms, which is a big part of meaty flavors and aromas that have made Impossible Foods products stand out. Impossible Pork joins the growing list of plant-based “meat” products looking to decrease the need for animals as a food source.  A large part of this drive to eat less meat is environmental - livestock currently amounts to about 14.5% of greenhouse gas emissions. Additionally, plant-based alternatives tend to be lower in cholesterol and fat than actual meat.   Along with pork, which is the most consumed meat in the world and holds a particular dominance in Asia, Impossible Foods and other food technology companies are hoping to expand into other meat sources. Beyond Meat, a close competitor to Impossible Burger, also sells plant-based ground meat and sausages and joined forces with KFC to offer plant-based chicken. Unfortunately, none of the Embr team was able to try Impossible Pork during their time at CES. When asked, Embr co-founder and COO Sam Shames noted that while he didn’t get to try the meat alternative, he had a particularly delicious roast beef sandwich during the conference (not plant-based). So, maybe not everyone is on board for replacing meat just yet, but it seems like Impossible Foods is getting us on our way.  Let’s talk about sex, maybe? A few months ago, the CTA announced a change in CES policy - the inclusion of sex-tech products on a one year trial basis in the health and wellness category.  This policy change was the result of a controversy that sprung out of last year’s conference when CES rescinded an award they had given to Lora Dicarlo, a startup whose high-tech personal massager initially won one of the show’s Innovation Awards. The award was taken away when the event organizers determined that Lora Dicarlo violated a rule stating that products that are “immoral, obscene, indecent, profane or not in keeping with CTA’s image will be disqualified.” The award was eventually reinstated, but not before stirring up conversations about gender and equality at CES.  Critics were quick to point out Lora Dicarlo wasn’t the first sex toy highlighted at the conference, and that shunning this particular device helped contribute to an already existing gender disparity at the conference (in 2018, only a fifth of attendees were women) by pushing ideas about the kinds of things that should and shouldn’t be seen at CES.  With all of this as a backdrop, sex-tech had a big presence at this year’s conference.  Lioness uses a smartphone app provides visual feedback so users can track their response to arousal and ultimately achieve better orgasms. The FitBit for pleasure was a 2020 Last Product Standing Finalist at CES.  For those looking to merge fashion and function, there is Crave, a company that makes wearable sex jewelry in pursuit of creating attractive looks that help destigmatize the pursuit of individual pleasure. Five years after the release of their Vesper vibrating necklace, Crave showed CES their newest design - Vesper Touch and Tease Vibrator Rings, which are USB rechargeable, waterproof, and made of body-safe material.  The addition of these sex-tech devices expands the world of FemTech, technology designed for women’s health and wellness. Until recently, FemTech products largely related to fertility and reproductive health - though, of course, having babies and tracking periods is not the only thing that women do. If you’re interested in hearing more about the diversity of FemTech, and Embr’s role in the industry, check out our interview with Martha Menard, Embr Lab’s Senior Scientist.  Sam showing off the Wave to another excited CES-goer.   We can’t wait to see where the world of wellness technology goes as we move into the next decade. What we can say is that we’re excited about seeing visions of “wellness” expand towards a more inclusive, accessible future. Even if we’re not all ready to stop eating bacon.   

Elana DeSantis

February 04, 2020

Always Looking Forward: a conversation with Senior Scientist Martha Menard

Martha Menard is a research scientist with 15+ of experience designing and leading research and evaluation projects for businesses, nonprofits, and academic institutions, specializing in integrative and behavioral health. She has her PhD in Research, Statistics and Evaluation from the University of Virginia, as well as having run a successful private massage therapy practice for over a decade. Martha joined Embr in October of last year, and we sat down to talk about her work here, her unusual career path, and the importance of age and gender diversity in tech.  Who are you and what do you do? I'm the senior scientist at Embr, and I joined in the team in October of 2019. One of the things I love about working at a startup is that you get to wear a lot of different hats, so I do basically whatever needs to be done! But my primary responsibility is working on clinical research and developing studies to investigate the clinical effectiveness and potential mechanisms of action of Embr’s technology.    So what ended up bringing you to Embr, especially in a research role? My background is actually in clinical healthcare research, my PhD is in research methods, quantitative and qualitative. And for probably 20 years off and on, I did a lot of consulting for academia, mostly universities and nonprofits, focused on integrative healthcare, organizational change, and development. I really enjoy healthcare research, especially clinical healthcare research. So when I saw the job posting for Embr, it was really appealing to me in a lot of ways, because I realized that opportunities in my current role at my last job were pretty limited. I was intrigued by Embr’s technology. When I came to visit, I really liked the company, and I liked the people. It was a pretty easy decision to take the job.  Can you share a little more about your background? What brought you into healthcare research? After high school, I went to college for one semester, and ended up dropping out because I had no clue what I wanted to do. So I basically went on with my life for about six or seven years, and when I decided to go back to school, I had decided really wanted to go into healthcare. I thought I might go into nursing, so I took my prereqs and I took a job as a nursing assistant. I started dealing with some back pain on the job, and a friend suggested that I get a massage for my back, and it was such a compelling experience for me. Around that same time, a lot of nurses around me were leaving nursing because of the lack of pay, lack of respect, and lack of autonomy. So, I thought those were all good reasons to not become a nurse, and I decided to go into massage therapy because it was a way that I could still help people and be involved in healthcare, but have better pay and more control of my work life.  I got my massage therapy training and began practicing, but I realized that I had a lot of gaps in my education. I went back to university and got my bachelor's degree through an adult degree program that was designed for older students who were working full time and going back to finish a degree. It was great for me. I got to design my own degree program, so I designed a program in biology, psychology and athletic training.  I continued in my massage practice for about 10 years. During that time, I started getting referrals from psychotherapists, who began sending some of their clients to me and I realized that I wanted to go back and get an advanced degree. I thought I might become a clinical psychologist, but I realized that I wouldn't be able to be licensed as a psychologist and still do massage therapy and bodywork for people. So I decided to change programs and went into research methodology.  I ended up getting a grant from the NIH [National Institute of Health] to do a study on massage therapy, and that became my dissertation. I graduated with my PhD, did academia for a little while, worked at a research center at UVA [University of Virginia] and helped write grants for their funding. I had kept my private practice all throughout graduate school kind of as both a part-time job but also, as a way to stay grounded in the real world because academia can feel so all-consuming.  A lot of your work at Embr relates to women’s health, specifically older women’s health. Why is that work important to you? Well, because it’s personal for me. There’s definitely a gender problem in tech as a whole, women are not very well represented. And older women, I would say older people in general, but older women in particular, are pretty invisible. Not just in the technology industry, but kind of in our culture generally.  People stop noticing you past a certain age, and people also make a lot of assumptions about older women. So working in an area where I'm the demographic that's being served, that's a great fit, because I see and understand the needs of our customer base.  I feel like that almost puts you at an advantage. Absolutely it does. Up until pretty recently, the sort of standard in clinical research was the 150-pound white male. Women have not traditionally been represented well in research, either as subjects or as scientists.  In organizational research, we have something called participatory action research, which is a well-known methodology. And it basically says if you're trying to design a program to benefit a group of people, then those people should be involved in designing the program or the  research. So if you're trying to design products for older adults or for women's health, then they should be involved in the creation of that. You should try to understand their experiences. You want to understand on a very deep level the problem that people are trying to solve.   We’ve recently seen an emergence in the tech world of FemTech, which is basically technology created to help with women’s health. Where do you feel like the FemTech industry is going? I think it’s important for women of all ages to be involved with FemTech, because it’s more than just applications that track your period or fertility. A lot of FemTech has been focused on women’s reproductive health, which is great, but that’s not all women do. If we have more age diversity [in the industry], we’ll be able to understand more about women’s health throughout their lives.  Speaking of age diversity, you just made a career jump at a later point in life than I would think a lot of people do. I just see it as a continuation, an evolution, of my skills. The research says that people should expect to change careers about seven times in your lifetime. I've been really fortunate that while my job titles might've been different, there's a core set of skills that I've been able to use throughout my career. And given how pervasive ageism is, especially in the technology industry, I'm thrilled to be a 60 something woman working in tech, working in a startup.  Do you have any advice for people looking to forward their career at any stage of life? I think people talk a lot about “do what you love and the money will follow, pursue your passion.” I think that's kind of overrated. I think more so, you should follow your curiosity, um, and do what's deeply satisfying to you. And there's nothing wrong with taking a job that pays well and pursuing your passions on the weekends, if what is satisfying and needed for you is stability.  Lastly, the big one: you just moved from South Carolina to Boston. Do you like it up here in the cold Northeast? It’s great. I like big cities. I used to live in Vancouver, so it's nice to be in a big urban area again. The weather could be better, but hey, you can't have everything. 

Elana DeSantis