BodyMedia is launching a cool looking health-tracking band that you can wear on your arm. The new BodyMedia Core 2 band packs four sensors into a small housing.

We’ll see a lot of such health-tracking devices at the Consumer Electronics Show this week in Las Vegas, where press events are already underway. But BodyMedia promises it will be the smallest wearable multi-sensor device of its kind and the first to offer a choice of interchangeable jewelry.

The housing for the device is smaller than an iPod Nano music player, and you can attach cool looking faceplates, straps, and cuffs to make it look more fashionable. It features sensors to measure heart rate, temperature, heat flux, galvanic skin response (sweat), and motion. The three-axis accelerometer gets an accurate measure of your steps. Altogether, the system uses the data from the sensors to calculate your calorie burn, exercise intensity, and sleep patterns.

The original Core armband was used on The Biggest Loser television show to track the fitness of contestants. The new device has energy-saving Bluetooth Smart technology that allows it to send activity updates to your smartphone or tablet. It can do so with longer battery life.

With the smartphone and tablet, you can use an app that makes sense of the data and interprets it so you can make smarter decisions about food, exercise, and other things health-related. The company is showing a prototype at CES for the first time today, but the new model won’t ship until August.

The system is not unlike the just-launched Basis Health Tracker from Basis Science. Other rivals have also hit the market, but BodyMedia has upped the ante by adding so many sensors, which capture more than 5,000 data points per minute. The heart-rate monitor is an extra option that you have to purchase separately. The monitor is included in an accessory strap with an embedded heart-rate sensor.

Besides the armband, the system comes with a free mobile app, an online Activity Manager that you can log into via the web, and personalized feedback with the BodyMedia FIT coach. The web site gives you historical data about your activity and sleep, with dietary adjustment recommendations based on your weight goals.

BodyMedia says its earlier monitoring technology has been clinically validated, improving weight loss up to three times over behavioral support alone. It is FDA-registered as a medical device. BodyMedia was founded in 1999 and is based in Pittsburgh, Pa. CES press events are being held Sunday and Monday, and the show floor opens on Tuesday.

Fitness tracking devices have invaded our lives, seeking to quench our thirst for data about whether we’re healthy or not. But Basis Science is hoping to create the mother of all devices with the unveiling today of its Basis Health Tracker and accompanying cloud-based web service.

The multisensor device doubles as a wrist watch, and it monitors your heart rate, sleep patterns, and how much you sweat. Then, it takes that data and presents it to you in a useful way, allowing you to keep track of your health trends over time, said Jef Holove, the chief executive of Basis Science, in an interview with VentureBeat.

“Every year in their quest to become healthier, millions of people join a gym, start a new health program, or download a fitness app,” said Jef Holove, CEO, Basis in San Francisco. “But often these approaches require us to log our lives manually, are too rigid to accommodate life’s ups and downs, or can be too time-consuming to fit our busy schedules.”

The $199 device uses a novel optical blood flow sensor to track your heart rate. It shines a light-emitting diode (LED) light into your skin. Then it measures the light that bounces back to see how much blood is flowing through your veins. It uses that information to calculate your heart rate. That data is what is missing from standard pedometers and fitness trackers from companies such as Jawbone, Fitbit, Nike Fuelband, and Striiv.

“We felt that being the best fitness tracker in a series of trackers wasn’t the best goal,” said Holove. “We wanted to improve users’ health.”
Basis has spent a few years figuring out how to get people to truly adopt lasting healthy habits. It says that research from the International Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology shows that approximately 50 percent of people starting a new exercise regime drop it within six months, citing lack of time as a key reason. With Basis, all you have to do is wear the watch all day long.

Basis helps you become aware of your fitness with minimal effort and plenty of nudges and rewards. But it isn’t overly game-like since many people take their health very seriously and don’t think of it as a game, said Holove. He believes that allowing people to make small changes in their fitness and sleep routines works best for a busy lifestyle.

Basis offers you rewards in the form of points when you achieve your goals. On the website, users can access data on more than 10 different habits related to their physical activity and sleep. Recommendations include getting moving, particularly if you’ve been sitting around for a half hour. The device can also prompt you to go to sleep at the same time each night, and it explains why that is important to your overall health. You can then drill down on the data and look at your sleep pattern over a period of month. You can slice the data any way you want and see how active you are compared to the prior week.

Like other devices, Basis uses a three-axis accelerometer to sense motion. That sensor captures your footsteps. As mentioned, it also captures your heart rate. A galvanic skin sensor captures your perspiration and skin temperature. The device also detects the temperature of the air so that it knows whether your skin is hot because of exercise or the weather. The device can also detect just how much impact your workout is having on your body. It captures your sleep down to the minute and figures out if you woke up at all or had a good night of uninterrupted sleep.

All of that physiological data is then uploaded to a secure, cloud-based service where Basis calculates your activity — including steps taken, calories burned, sleep quality, and resting heart rate. The process is automated, so you don’t have to remember to turn the device on when you wake up or otherwise switch modes manually.

That data should make “quantified self” fans happy because they can delve into a search of self-knowledge. But Holove said that Basis wants to strike a balance by giving you enough information so that you can answer the question, “Now what?”

Holove said that it took a long time to get the service right. But the delays in launching the product also helped lower its overall costs. The optical blood flow monitor is similar to the kind used in hospitals to monitor your heart rate. Over time, that technology has gotten cheaper and light enough to wear on your wrist.

“We wanted to take more time on the device itself, testing it fully for quality reasons,” he said. “We also spent more time thinking about what we wanted to achieve.” The team looked at books such as Persuasive Technology to get a sense for what some of the big thinkers thought about improving health.

Founded five years ago, Basis Science has raised $9 million from Norwest Venture Partners and Doll Capital Management. You can buy the Basis Health Tracker on the company’s website. Shipments start in early December.

The company was started by Nadeem Kassam, who had previously started an entertainment company. A dedicated Bikram yogi, he decided that something fundamental was missing in health improvement.

Tim Chang, a former partner at Norwest, noted recently that it would be cool to wear the tracker and then compare it to your Google Calendar. You could then figure out how stressful it is to drive on the Bay Area’s 101 freeway at rush hour or how stressed you get in a meeting with your boss. Holove said Basis doesn’t measure those things yet, but they could be on the horizon.

Here’s a video of Holove showing off the Basis Health Tracker.

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