i3 - November/December 2016 - 65

By Robin Raskin

Business

CT N E WS L I N E

Big Thoughts Before
CES 2017

ehind every breakthrough product at CES is a person with
a big idea, coupled with a healthy dose of patience and
fortitude. We caught up with four thought leaders who'll
be speaking at CES at the Fitness Tech Summit, Digital
Health Summit, The Digital Money Forum and the Kids@Play
conference to see the intersection where sweat meets inspiration.

Digital Money: Predicting
the Future of Money

CRAIG OWEN

BRETT KING:
Entrepreneur, Speaker, Author
and Radio Personality

Nowhere is the scene riper for big tech
ideas than in the world of finance. Brett
King's podcast "Breaking Banks" looks
at technology's impact on the financial
sector. "Banking," he says, "is definitely
becoming something you do, not somewhere you go."
King talks about removing friction
from and adding context to the banking
process. And while both banks and
startup fintech companies are in the race,
C TA . t e c h / i 3

he tips his hat to the speed and flexibility
of startups. "If you're a bank and you still
require a signature on a piece of paper,
then expect that your 'product' is already
being attacked by a startup or more agile
player who can deliver that in realtime on a smartphone, tablet, watch or
browser," he says. New players like Venmo,
Affirm, ApplePay, WeChat and King's own
company Moven, can outperform banks
that have less flexibility in reimagining the
core experience around their product.
In 2017, King says we'll use IoT
devices for banking, beginning with
smart home devices like Alexa that are
commerce-capable. "As we have devices
like autonomous vehicles that have
wallet capabilities to support things
like paying road tolls, getting paid by
networks like Uber, or access to supercharging stations for electricity, we
realize that the whole payments model
that is linked to an "identified" person
or individual will be challenged. As soon
as IoT devices start transacting, paying
or charging - there will be some pretty
radical shifts in the way both banks
and regulators think about payments
and identity."
King says, "The other fundamental
technology that we'll see a ton of
investment in over the next two to
three years is blockchain." He adds that
regulators are very favorable towards
startups right now with U.S., U.K.,
Singapore, Hong Kong and other regulators creating regulatory "sandboxes"
specifically to allow experimentation
outside of traditional regulation.

Fitness Tech:
Perfecting the Art
of the Sensor
DR. STEPHEN
LEBOEUF:
Founder and
president, Valencell

Sensors, mechanisms that respond to
external stimuli, have been around for a
while but now they've ubiquitous across
the landscape of digital products.
Valencell just won a CTA Innovation Entrepreneur Award for fine-tuning optical
sensor technology. Optical sensors send
pulses of light (both visible and infrared)
to the skin. The sensors can measure
heart rate, VO2 (volume of oxygen),
energy expenditure, cadence, and R-R
intervals (the time between heartbeats),
painting a picture of overall fitness level.
The appeal of optical sensors? Founder
and President Stephen LeBoeuf says they
don't need to be in direct contact with the
body the way that other sensors do. But,
before the optical sensors could find their
way into fitness products like armbands,
earbuds and sports clothing, Valencell
had a lot of "magic" to do.
"When we began Valencell in 2006,"
says LeBoeuf, "optical sensors were
too big to be part of wearable tech and
produced too noisy a signal to yield any
significant biometrics." Now, with a much
improved signal to noise ratio, and increased processing power, the accuracy
and consistency have greatly improved.
This year at CES you're going to see a
lot of emphasis on what the industry is
calling "hearables" - discrete earbuds
that monitor physical workouts (while
playing your favorite music). LeBoeuf
says that the profusion of blood vessels
just inside the lobe of the ear makes it the
perfect location to use the smaller-thanever optical sensors to monitor everything from blood flow to respiration to RRI
(the intervals between beats of the heart).
Next up, says LeBoeuf, is for optical
sensors like Valencell's to be used in medical grade equipment, both for prevention
and detection, especially with chronic
conditions. "Optical sensors," predicts
LeBoeuf, "will be ready to do things like
monitor the tremors of a Parkinson's
patient or detect episodes of dizziness or
wrong body cadence."
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2016

http://valencell.com/ http://www.ces.tech/Conference/ConferenceProgram/Conference-Tracks/FitnessTech-Summit http://www.ces.tech/Conference/ConferenceProgram/Conference-Tracks/Digital-Health-Summit http://www.ces.tech/Conference/ConferenceProgram/Conference-Tracks/The-Digital-Money-Forum http://www.ces.tech/Conference/ConferenceProgram/Conference-Tracks/Kids@Play-and-FamilyTech-Summit http://www.ces.tech/Conference/ConferenceProgram/Conference-Tracks/Digital-Health-Summit http://CTA.tech/i3

i3 - November/December 2016

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