SEATTLE: Highlights of Amazon Halo
- Amazon Halo combines a suite of AI-powered health tools with an innovative and stylish wrist band
- Body feature uses new computer vision technology to give an accurate body fat percentage measurement from the comfort and privacy of home—as accurately as methods a doctor would use
- Tone feature uses machine learning to help customers get a more complete view of their health and wellness by understanding how they sound to others.
- Use Amazon Halo to monitor Activity and Sleep; plus, discover new tips with Labs—guided programs that help customers discover healthier habits with content from Headspace, Orangetheory Fitness, SWEAT, WW, and more
Amazon introduced Amazon Halo, a new service dedicated to helping customers improve their individual health and wellness. Amazon Halo combines a suite of AI-powered health features that provide actionable insights into overall wellness via the new Amazon Halo app with the Amazon Halo Band, which uses multiple advanced sensors to provide the highly accurate information necessary to power Halo insights.
Customers in the U.S. can request early access to Amazon Halo with the Amazon Halo Band and 6 months of Halo membership available for a special price of $64.99. Amazon Halo and Amazon Halo Band are available for early access in the U.S. started from August 27.
“Despite the rise in digital health services and devices over the last decade, we have not seen a corresponding improvement in population health in the U.S. We are using Amazon’s deep expertise in artificial intelligence and machine learning to offer customers a new way to discover, adopt, and maintain personalized wellness habits,” said Dr. Maulik Majmudar, Principal Medical Officer, Amazon Halo. “Health is much more than just the number of steps you take in a day or how many hours you sleep. Amazon Halo combines the latest medical science, highly accurate data via the Halo Band sensors, and cutting-edge artificial intelligence to offer a more comprehensive approach to improving your health and wellness.”
Amazon Halo Band is purpose-built to focus on your health and wellness, unlike smartwatches and fitness trackers. Some of the features of Amazon Halo Band are:-
The small sensor capsule delivers highly accurate data and includes an accelerometer, a temperature sensor, a heart rate monitor, two microphones, an LED indicator light, and a button to turn the microphones on or off are some of the other functions, Halo Band performs.
The Amazon Halo app is a suite of five core features designed to give customers a comprehensive understanding of their health and wellness—and the tools to take action to make a measurable improvement. Some of the features are:-
- Activity: Informed by American Heart Association physical activity guidelines and the latest medical research, Amazon Halo awards points based on the intensity and duration of movement, not just the number of steps taken. Amazon Halo deducts one activity point for every hour over eight hours of sedentary time in a day, outside of sleep. A baseline goal of 150 activity points is set and measured weekly and more.
- Sleep: Amazon Halo uses motion, heart rate, and temperature to measure time asleep and time awake; time spent in the various phases of sleep including deep, light, and REM; and skin temperature while sleeping. The sensors in the band allow for continuous sleep monitoring, so customers get rich, detailed information without having to charge the band every day and more.
- Body: Using new innovations in computer vision and machine learning, Amazon Halo lets customers measure their body fat percentage from the comfort and privacy of their own home, making this important information easily accessible, etc.
- Tone: The innovative Tone feature uses machine learning to analyze energy and positivity in a customer’s voice so they can better understand how they may sound to others, helping improve their communication and relationships and more.
- Labs: Amazon Halo Labs are science-backed challenges, experiments, and workouts that allow customers to discover what works best for them specifically, so they can build healthier habits, etc. Customers can choose from labs created by Amazon Halo experts.
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“The American Heart Association is excited about technology that focuses on new and interesting ways for people to improve their cardiovascular health, quality of life, and healthy life years. We’re thrilled to see companies like Amazon innovating in this space,” said Eduardo Sanchez, M.D., MPH, Chief Medical Officer for Prevention, American Heart Association. “The Association is committed to helping people live longer, healthier lives—both physically and mentally. The first step is knowing your current status, and features like Body composition are important advances. Through our Center for Health Technology and Innovation, we are pleased to provide our evidence-based science as part of this solution, which we believe has the potential to drive behavior change towards healthier lives.”
- Privacy is foundational to Amazon Halo, and multiple layers of privacy and security are built into the service to keep data safe and in customers’ control. Health data is encrypted in transit and in the cloud, and customers can download or delete their data at any time directly from the app. Body scan images are automatically deleted from the cloud after processing, so only the customer sees them.
- The tone is enabled by creating a personal voice profile, after which it begins capturing short samples of speech and providing insights and daily recaps. Speech samples are always analyzed locally on the customer’s phone and automatically deleted after processing—nobody, not even the customer, ever hears them
- Amazon has collaborated with leading health and wellness companies to enable customers to connect their Amazon Halo account to third party programs for even more ways to enhance their health journey.
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