Digital-health

Sony presented the mSafety platform at the Connected Health Conference in Boston. This platform addresses digital healthcare companies to enable them incorporating wearable sensors into remote monitoring services.

The mSafety platform is a dedicated solution for companies offering telemonitoring services and includes a simple user interface and a secure backend, easy to integrate with existing software platforms.

mSafety includes a wristwatch device with a battery life of more than a week, high-contrast black and white screen, several sensors and a secure and always active network connection that does not require login or other identification by the end-user.

mSafety uses encryption for data transmission to ensure security and privacy. The backend is easy to set up and allows digital healthcare companies to simply manage software updates for user devices.

Sony is demonstrating its platform to European telemedicine companies, such as those that manage diabetes or others that provide care for the elderly. However, Sony sees the US as its primary market due to its wider acceptance of digital technologies for health and remote monitoring.

So far Sony, compared to Samsung, Fitbit, Apple or several other large electronic companies, has had a rather limited presence in the field of digital health. To carve out its niche market Sony, in designing the mSafety platform, has focused on technical strengths and design, while leaving the particulars of health data monitoring and interpretation to its clients.

“We may not be in a situation where we can implement the complete turnkey solution, but we are certainly experts in the telecommunications sector and in the manufacturing of wearable technologies,” said Anders Strömberg, Head of Wearable Technologies. “So with that, we spent quite a lot of time last year doing feasibility studies on different types of chronic conditions … and we found that we could build something that has good battery life, easy to connect, simple user interface — focusing not so much on the gadget but on these kinds of elderly users or people with impairments.”

In addition to usability issues, Stromberg said that many companies complain about frequent firmware updates and support for commercial smartwatches, which often involve high costs.

Sony, therefore, intends to follow a different strategy, providing dedicated devices, without unnecessary functions, easily managed by telemedicine companies, with a long life cycle and a medical device approach.