Google on Monday its debuted its second Fitbit tracker of the year, the Fitbit Edge, which sits between the screenless health tracker Fitbit Air and the more advanced Pixel Watch.
The new fitness tracker also builds on Google’s health tracking ambitions by combining advanced health sensors with AI-powered insights designed to identify changes in a user’s health and translate those signals into personalized guidance.
The Fitbit Edge tracker features "the most advanced health and fitness tools in a sleek, ultra-slim design, plus, up to a week of battery life on a single charge," according to Google Wearables Software leaders in a blog post.
The Fitbit Edge, priced at $180, features automatic workout detection, an altimeter and proactive heath monitoring to detect changes in blood pressure and insulin resistance trends.
Google has focused on shifting health technology from a fragmented, reactive data-tracking ecosystem to a proactive, personalized companion for consumers' everyday life, Rishi Chandra, general manager of health and home at Google, wrote in a blog post.
In May, the company rolled out its Google Health app, the Fitbit Air and Health Coach, an AI-powered personal health coach that combines a fitness trainer, a sleep coach and a health and wellness advisor. The tech giant transitioned the Fitbit app to the Google Health app that brings together a user's health data from wearable devices, Health Connect, Apple Health and medical records into a redesigned experience.
In August, Google introduced Health Guardian, a suite of health and safety tools that track subtle changes to health over time. The Health Guardian tools use wearable sensors and AI to identify trends related to insulin resistance, blood pressure and sleep breathing quality. The Health Coach and Health Guardian features are available on the new Fitbit Edge through a Google Health Premium subscription.
The insulin resistance trends feature on Pixel and Fitbit wearables passively analyzes multi-week physiological data to estimate metabolic energy efficiency and track high/low trends without requiring a blood sample. The blood pressure trends feature is built on WavesFM, a foundation model trained on billions of minutes of raw heart and movement data.
The company is also expanding its network of app partners. Google Health inked a multi-year strategic partnership with female health app Flo to enable users to integrate cycle, pregnancy and menopause guidance directly into the Google Health app and Coach. The two companies also plan to partner on dedicated research initiatives spanning underserved topics — this may include perimenopause, polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome (PMOS), pregnancy, and postpartum recovery, according to Nichole Young-Lin, M.D., clinician lead, women's health at Google.
Google and Flo will partner to build new products that are specifically designed for women, with a deep integration of Flo's women's health insights and algorithms with our expertise in wearable hardware and advanced sensors, Young-Lin wrote in a blog post.
Through a partnership with Abbott, Google Health app users in the U.S. can connect Abbott’s Lingo over-the-counter continuous glucose monitor to the app for unified insights across glucose, meals, workouts and sleep. The company also expanded its integration with MyFitnessPal so users can bring daily meal and nutrition logs from MyFitnessPal into Google Health. And, Google executives announced a partnership with Function Health that will allow users in the U.S. to be able to import clinical lab results from Function Health into the Google Health app.
Google acquired Fitbit for $2.1 billion in 2021 and has evolved the brand from a fitness wearable that tracks steps into a more sophisticated health monitoring device with ambitions to build an AI-powered consumer health platform. The tech giant aims to connect wearable devices, personal health data and personalized AI-powered coaching.