WithingsBloodPressureMonitor
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Withings Health Companion app: A new way to look at personal fitness
I'm a big fan of the Withings line of personal health devices -- over the years, I've purchased one of their Wi-Fi Body Scales and a Blood Pressure Monitor. The devices are great, and it's nice (and sometimes frustrating) to see how your health is doing over time. But the stats that were provided did little to motivate me to really exercise more, eat less, and even care about taking my blood pressure daily. The completely new Withings Health Companion app (free) is designed to not only monitor your health, but motivate you to do something about it. Unlike the previous WiScale app, which just tracked weight and BP and is the tool with which you take your blood pressure, the Withings Health Companion app lets you set goals and reminders. Upon launching the app, you see a "butterfly" with four wings -- one cyan, one orange, one magenta, and one green. Each wing is associated with a different health factor -- sleep, activity, heart, and weight. The idea is that you should try to eventually "fill" each wing with color, indicating that you're managing sleep, activity, your heart health, and your weight. %Gallery-162801% To do this, the Withings Health Companion tries to "turn long-term goals into small achievable targets, and monitor your weekly progress toward your goals." In my personal case, I am able to monitor my heart health (BP and heart rate) using the Withings Blood Pressure Monitor and add my weight to the app every day using the Wi-Fi Body Scale. For capturing activity, I have now set up RunKeeper to report my activities to the app. I wish that there was a way to send info from my FitBit, which I wear constantly, to the app. The last item, sleep, requires input from other devices made by BodyMedia and Zeo. Once again, I'd prefer to have my sleep information sent to the Withings Health Companion app from the FitBit, which also tracks that info. There doesn't appear to be a way of adding my nightly sleep information to the app manually, which is somewhat irritating. Since I'm not exactly thrilled about having to spend a minimum of US$149 for yet another monitoring device, I'm hoping that FitBit and Withings will work out a way for the FitBit data to be used by the Health Companion. Of course, I could use the FitBit website to monitor all of this, since I could get activity readings and sleep information from the FitBit and weight data transferred from the Withings scale, but there's no way to track blood pressure. Sigh -- it's like these companies all want to get you tied into their particular ecosystem and don't want to make it easy for you to choose the combination of apps and devices to track your health. At this point, one of the "wings" of the butterfly will always be withered, since this app won't let me add my sleep information. I do, however, like the way that the app displays all pertinent health information on one screen and reminds me to take readings or to exercise. Do you have a favorite app or mobile website for tracking your health and personal fitness? Tell us about it in the comments.
Withings' new cloud can tell you how fat you are anywhere in the world
Fitness gadgets are a big part of this year's CES and everyone's racing to get hooks into a cloud platform. Withings is pulling the dust sheets off its own health and wellness cloud that'll aggregate the data from your web-connected scales and blood pressure monitor to your eternal public humiliation. It'll also pull in data from Zeo's range of branded sleep gear and your RunKeeper data -- but it's not clear if you can edit out the evidence about how much you ate over the holidays.
Withings Blood Pressure Monitor: An iOS-friendly way to track your BP
Withings is a company with an interesting mission -- making it possible to send health information directly from measuring devices to the internet, where the data can be shared with personal computer and mobile apps. The company has just started selling its new Blood Pressure Monitor (US$129.00) in the United States, and over the weekend I tried one out. I already have a Withings Wi-Fi Body Scale ($159), and I find it to be an indispensable part of my daily health regimen. I step on the scale every morning and let it blast my weight to the Withings website. I've been using one of the many Withings-compatible iOS apps, Weightbot ($1.99) by Tapbots, to monitor my weight fluctuations. I can also visit the Withings website to look at the raw data, share it with several services, like Google Health or Microsoft HealthVault (I use neither), or create a PDF of weight and blood pressure to send to my doctor. %Gallery-126682% Setup Probably the coolest thing about the Withings Blood Pressure Monitor is that it is made to work only with iOS devices. If you have an iPhone, iPod touch or iPad, you're set. The setup process is incredibly simple -- you just unlock your device, if you have a lock screen set up, and then plug the cable into the Dock Connector on the iOS device. Chances are pretty good that when you start using the Blood Pressure Monitor, you won't have the free WiScale app on your device, so the monitor "tickles" your device to see if the app is there, and sends you to the App Store to download it if is not. WiScale is designed to display your weight and blood pressure history, and it's also the app that runs the Blood Pressure Monitor and captures the BP data for you. To send the health data to Withings for sharing purposes, you need to either set up a new MyWithings account through the app or use an existing login. That's pretty much it for the setup, as the monitor comes with four AAA batteries pre-installed. There are no Wi-Fi settings to make, since your iOS device is used to send the blood pressure data to Withings. Taking your blood pressure As with any blood pressure monitoring regime, you should plan on taking your pressure with the Withings Blood Pressure Monitor at the same time each day for consistency's sake. I chose to take mine first thing in the morning. Your monitor has a cuff with a nice springy curl to it and the standard Velcro patches to make sure it is tightly attached to your upper arm. The electronics for the device are in a polished aluminum tube on the cuff that also aligns the cuff on your arm properly. Per the instructions that are printed on the tube, you align the cuff with the pulse point on the inside of your elbow, with the cable pointing down towards your iOS device. With the WiScale app launched and the iOS device plugged into the monitor, a blank blood pressure screen appears. You can either press the large green Start button to begin the process or switch users and then press Start. The display on the iOS device shows that a measurement is underway, and a small fan icon begins to turn as the pump inflates the BP cuff. Eventually your pulse appears as a beating heart icon, the cuff begins to deflate, and finally, your diastolic and systolic blood pressures and pulse rate are displayed. At that point, you can tap the blue Done button to quit or press Start again to take your pressure again. There's also an auto mode, which takes your blood pressure three separate times (with a pre-set time period in between each test) and averages the readings. Viewing the results After the blood pressure reading has been made, you get immediate feedback. If the diastolic and systolic blood pressure readings are in the normal range, a green dot appears next to the number. Likewise, if your pulse appears to be in the normal range, you'll see a green dot next to the beats per minute count. For any of the readings, a yellow dot is sign for concern, while a red dot indicates a situation that you may wish to share with your healthcare provider. There's a "thumbwheel" at the bottom of the results to scroll back and forth through your BP readings. If you're bringing in weight data from a Withings scale, you can see your latest weight and that day's BP reading by flicking between two screens on the display. Remember that the app has also sent a copy of that blood pressure reading to the Withings site, and it's easy to share that and your weight data with a health professional or personal trainer. Conclusion For anyone with a family history of high blood pressure who wants to keep track of his or her BP automatically, the Withings Blood Pressure Monitor is a worthwhile and easy-to-use tool. Having used a lot of less expensive cuffs in the past, I can't say that the Withing monitor is going to give you any more accuracy or make your BP magically go down, but it does make keeping track of your blood pressure history a snap. I found the device to be faster than many less expensive cuffs, and I like the three-reading average that is available in auto mode. If you're a middle-aged guy like me whose background includes many ancestors with heart and blood pressure problems, your doctor has probably told you to keep an eye on your BP. The Withings Blood Pressure Monitor, coupled with your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch, is a fast and fun way to get into that healthy habit and share your information with your healhcare provider.
