Nokia to launch smart hairbrush
SOME technology companies are destined to be forever associated with one moment, be it a spectacular flop or an innovation.
For Nokia, associations with the first flowering of the mass market in mobile phones are proving hard to shake. With its recent purchase of a digital health start-up, Withings, which makes internetconnected thermometers, heart rate and blood pressure monitors and weighing scales as well as fitness trackers, baby monitors and a new home security system, it is attempting a comeback as a consumer brand.
Its first product of the year launched a new category for Nokia: beauty tech.
The company unveiled a “smart hairbrush”, a first for the digital health industry, at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas at the beginning of the month, to a mixed reception.
“People’s first reaction has been, ‘Do we really need a smart hairbrush,’” head of Nokia’s health tech department, Cedric Hutchings said.
“But after showing them how it works and explaining the science behind it, we’ve had a superpositive response. It’s a product that will appeal to people who are interested in their hair quality and beauty, no question.”
The hairbrush, called the Hair Coach, is fitted with a microphone that “listens” for dryness, and sensors that analyse brushing and hair quality.
It sends the data to a smartphone app via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, which makes recommendations about brushing technique and new products to try.
A $200 (R2 683) hairbrush might appear to be an odd choice for a health business, even if it is a “world first”.
But the brush is part of a plan to enhance everyday products to build an accurate picture of users’ health without them really noticing.
Industry excitement over products like Withings’ is clear, with scores of companies competing to make more accurate sensors and wearables.
Consumer interest in wearables and health monitoring has proven difficult to sustain, however, raising questions over Nokia’s gadget-led plans. Even Apple has struggled with its smartwatch. Research director at the IT research firm Gartner, Laura Craft says: “The healthcare market is huge, and wearables are important. But I wonder whether the consumer-driven side will manage to sustain itself compared with the ability to use these products for better care and monitoring.”
Instead, Craft says: “They have wonderful potential if we can bring them into medical care.
“We have a global shortage of primary health care professionals who end up seeing patients they don’t need to who are perfectly healthy.
“There’s a real opportunity to solve the health crisis with these technologies.”
Nokia has plans to do just that. Although its acquisition of Withings was hailed as a return to the consumer market, the former phone maker’s ambitions extend much further than a range of new medical wearables and devices.
“We will keep on building on our very advanced sensors and analysis of consumer vitals hidden in everyday devices,” Hutchings says.
“But on another side we are looking at artificial intelligence and analytics, the ability to generate insight out of the capacity to analyse data on totally new scales. Both ends are really where Nokia can play.”
Hutchings is hoping to create a system that can collect patient data from its range of sensors and analyse it for any changes or abnormalities.
When these occur it can then alert medical professionals. — The Daily Telegraph