Next Gen Sports Sensors for 2023 and beyond - Lactate, blood pressure, hydration, creatinine

Next-Gen Sports Sensors - When will be able to buy them? 2022-23 marks a mild turning point for sports and wellness sensors. The next wave of technological innovation is upon us and we are already starting to see the fruits. Scope: I'm mainly going to be talking here about the novel, miniaturised, non-invasive sensors that can be integrated within a watch, skin patch or armband. Q: What's new? A: ShortWave Infrared/Lasers can now be used instead of the LEDs we've seen for years to get better data. The data is VASTLY more frequently sensed than before and this opens up the possibilities to replace older tech like invasive glucose monitors and 'rubbish' tech like miniaturised balloons inside a watch strap to measure blood pressure. A: There are other novel ways to 'sense' physiological markers including bioimpedance and electrochemical analysis. These can now be sufficiently miniaturised and low-powered for practical use cases to be exploited. Base Sensors HR sensors - we've already seen that chest straps and optical wrist sensors can give us reasonably accurate HR and resting HRV. Those of you who have followed this blog and similar ones will have marvelled at what is possible from the analysis of HRV which now has a clear scientific foundation for measuring stress, determining the onset of illness, determining LT1/LT2 threshold levels in controlled circumstances and more. We will perhaps see more widespread insights possible from ECG/EKG chest straps and the refinement of some of the existing HRV models for better commercial exploitation. But don't expect anything truly new to surprise us here in the years to come other than the increased accuracy of optical HR. O2 Saturation - Wellness sensors that can determine our blood oxygen have their place. It's just that it's a small place. Sure they might help climbers with altitude acclimation but that's a pretty niche requirement. The main usage is for determining wellness and if your SpO2 falls below 95-97 ish per cent then you might have a problem. But if you've got that kind of problem you need to go and see a medical professional and, in any case, in my experience with these sensors they're just not accurate despite all the validation studies claimed by the vendors. Respiratory rate - can already be determined from either HRV or accelerometers (Apple) to a sufficient level of accuracy. Core Temperature and skin temperature - are important markers for both sports and medical uses. Clip-on, non-invasive wearables like GreenTEG's CORE Body Temperature are already well-suited to elite sports usage and sports lab research. 2023-4 will probably see other types of sensors produce the same data but I'm not sure that there is much new to be gained here for generic athletes. However, the new technical methods should still get roughly the same quality of temperature data but perhaps in a more miniaturised chip that could be integrated into a watch/strap. Blood Pressure - Of all the base-level sensors, it's those that measure blood pressure that proves the most challenging. Various solutions already exist but, in my opinion, they are simply not good enough. For example, we have seen OMRON & BP Doctor Pro sell watches with an inflatable balloon on the underside and we've also seen the Samsung Watch5 with some BP abilities. Perhaps at the back end of 2023 or 2024 we shall see spectroscopy-based BP readings on smartwatches (somewhat like Aktiia and Valencell). Such timescales are now talked about by the likes of Rockley Photonics (part-owned by Apple) Advanced Spectroscopy Sensors The next leaps forward should start next year, in 2024. Glucose - we currently see Abbot/Supersapiens do a good job of measuring interstitial glucose but in an invasive way and using a sensor that has a very limited life (14 days). 2024 should see non-invasive glucose monitoring conquered at which point someone might start talking to Garmin about it. Lactate - following glucose, lactate will be the next to fall. Ostensibly it will be most useful as a medical sensor with implications for infection measurement and functional measurements of the brain, thyroid and lungs. I don't know if this translates to sports lactate monitoring but I would have thought so. This will invariably remain in the domain of sports labs and highly committed athletes...it's a small market. Alcohol, Urea, Creatinine, Albumin, Hemoglobin, and Bilirubin all come into play as substances that can be sensed for medical purposes but this will be beyond 2025. When & How we will see these new sensors It is highly unlikely that we will first see any of these sensors directly on a sports watch like a Garmin. Thus, the route to market for the technologies will be twofold Via mass market, premium smartwatches - we're looking at a multi-sensor chipset integrated into the Apple Watch or Samsung Galaxy Watch (perhaps a Chinese tech company if they can "miraculously source" the tech from somewhere #PatentInfringement). Via standalone products from startups - I'm envisaging products like Flowbio, Nix, hdrop and Supersapiens where their solution is built around one biological marker and integrated into a Garmin or Apple sports data environment. The availability of the technology for someone like Garmin to commercially exploit will lag at least 2 years behind the first movers. Garmin will want to make sure it can add value to the sports component of the data and Apple will want to ensure the data is correct. Ultimately I don't see how most sports startups can make any money here. They have a costly business model to get a minimum viable product, limited market size and limited time to exploit the market before the technology is mass-produced by someone else. Thus if the startup plans to be acquired by someone like Garmin as its exit strategy then definitely make sure you PROPERLY integrate with Garmin from Day 1.