Amazon Enters Health-Tracking Space With Halo Wristband, App Debut

Amazon introduced Halo on Thursday, a subscription service that uses an app and wristband to monitor an individual’s overall health and wellness, including activity, sleep and body fat, as well as tone of voice to analyze emotional well-being. “We are using Amazon’s deep expertise in artificial intelligence and machine learning to offer customers a new way to discover, adopt, and maintain personalised wellness habits,” commented Maulik Majmudar, principal medical officer for Amazon Halo.

Halo marks Amazon’s first move into the wearable health market. Fitbit, which is awaiting regulatory approval regarding its pending merger with Google, recently launched Fitbit Sense, a new health smartwatch that comes with the world’s first electrodermal activity sensor to help manage stress.

According to Amazon, unlike other smartwatches, the Halo band does not have a screen or constant notifications. The company said its device uses a small sensor capsule to deliver data, and includes an accelerometer, a temperature sensor, a heart-rate monitor, two microphones, and an LED indicator light, among other functions, with a battery that lasts up to seven days and fully charges in under 90 minutes.

Meanwhile, Amazon said the Halo app is a suite of five features designed to give individuals a comprehensive understanding of their health and wellness. It monitors activity by awarding points based on the intensity and duration of a person’s movement, and deducting activity points for every hour over eight hours of sedentary time per day. Halo also measures an individual’s sleep, including time spent asleep and awake and time spent in various sleep stages. The app also measures body fat percentage by using computer vision technology to scan the body.

The app’s Tone feature, which must be enabled by the user, applies machine learning to analyse “energy and positivity” in an individual’s voice, “so they can better understand how they may sound to others, helping improve their communication and relationships,” Amazon said. Meanwhile, users who have a specific goal can sign up for challenges through Halo Labs, which includes partners such as the American Heart Association, Harvard Health Publishing, the Mayo Clinic and others.

The Halo wristband will cost just under $100, while the service will cost about $4 per month.