Today, health has become the concern of all people, and wearable devices have begun to influence and change people's lives with their unrivaled companionship!
Nobel Prize-winning physicist George Smoot once participated in such a project: focusing on the clinical application of wearable devices and artificial intelligence technology, with the help of smart wearable devices, automatic early warning of acute myocardial infarction, which can maximize life-saving.
He believes that if wearable devices and artificial intelligence are combined, people can have a better understanding of their own bodies, and truly achieve early diagnosis and treatment of diseases, and even through the popularization of "wearable devices + artificial intelligence", so that the human life expectancy increased by another 10 years.
The dream shines in reality, and today, technology and intelligence are advancing by leaps and bounds, and different forms of wearable devices are emerging in an endless stream, and the domestic and international markets are blowing up a new wave of wearable devices. This trend is taking over the increasingly saturated sales of smart phones, opened a new round of "technology to change the life" of the new path.
Currently, smart wearable devices on the market can be used to track and analyze personal heart rate, sleep, blood oxygen, and other sports health data to help people without leaving home to complete the health monitoring, early warning of heart-related diseases and other functions.
In Huami Technology's view, it is much more than that. More importantly, Huami believes that health is the core value of the smart wearable industry, and it is even the core value of the entire IoT smart hardware industry.
And to provide the best products with excellent functionality, ultimate experience, and smooth usage out of the box, it is not enough to use a generic chip and a magically modified system. In other words, the magic modification is a simple and rough cut and fit, and self-research is the customization that requires a lot of investment. Only then can we make the ultimate product that meets the user's needs.
Is this enough? "Not satisfied" Huami is still seeking change! On the basis of the previous Huami products health functions, after five years of research and development PumpBeats blood pressure monitoring engine, Huami technology to attack the ability to show all. The engine has completed the first phase of the experiment, equipped with the engine of the wearable device, can realize 30 seconds a key to measure blood pressure.
In addition, Huami envisioned "so that the nuclear magnetic equipment can be like the PC to the tens of thousands of households", through investment to promote the global portable nuclear magnetic *** vibration MRI technology research and development. The portable MRI device, which is only 1.5 meters tall and weighs less than 0.8 tons, upholds the lightweight characteristics similar to wearable devices.
Behind all these efforts, Huami is constantly delivering the concept of "connecting health with technology", enriching and advancing the "core-end-cloud" strategy, and delivering thoughts on the future of the health industry.
The change of people's healthy lives is just beginning!
"Core" track, "small" system
In George Smoot's vision, wearable devices will enter every aspect of life in the future, and can even be printed directly on the skin. skin. As long as you are willing and receptive, you can manage your health in a holistic way.
IDC's latest data show that the global smart wearable devices have a bright future. 2016 ~ 2020, the total wearable device shipments CAGR of 44.5%. In the next five years, the global smart wearable device shipments compound growth rate of about 25%, 2025 is expected to ship 1.358 billion units, to maintain a strong growth trend.
This is a piece of technology and smart blue sea, but also full of imagination of the hot land, all kinds of enterprises come one after another, hustle and bustle! But counting the products on the market, a lot of smart wearable devices, are using a common chip and magic system, not only can not meet the needs of users, but also limit the outside world on the imagination of smart wearable devices.
Huang Wang, founder, chairman and CEO of Huami Technology, knows this well. He found that to maximize the user experience of a smart watch, smart bracelet, you need to find the right chip, the right operating system in the market, and integrate the two into the square inch, to make those features that users want, is almost impossible to complete the task.
Not without thinking about shortcuts, but shortcuts are not the way of Huami, because in the experience of the product, Huang Wang refused to compromise. Huang Wang said that the ultimate in hardware is the chip, the ultimate in software is to do their own operating system, the ultimate in algorithms is to do their own set of algorithms for artificial intelligence. When the three aspects of technology are developed to the extreme, the final product is the ultimate product.
Therefore, there are millions of roads, but Huami has only one self-research. Only through self-research can we meet the needs of users and complete the best performance, lowest cost and best experience products.
"People who are serious about hardware must personally do the software", "People who are serious about big data must personally do the sensors", "If you want to do the perfect algorithm, you must do the chip, otherwise , you can't find a chip in the industry that completely satisfies your algorithm", this is the obsession of Huami and Huang Wang.
From the first generation of millet bracelet produced in 2014, to now own brand Amazift, Zepp smartwatch shipments ranked in the top four in the world, Huami constantly integrate hardware, software and algorithms, so that the product is more understanding of the user, more suitable for wearable devices.
Obsession can make a person stubborn, or it can make a person burst out with great power, obviously Huami belongs to the latter.In 2018 and 2020, Huami released its self-developed wearable device chips - Huangshan 1 and Huangshan 2 one after another. At the recent Next Beat 2021 conference, Huami once again released the same series of new-generation chips - Huangshan 2S.
The Huangshan 2S, which adopts a dual-core RISC-V architecture, not only integrates GPUs and small cores, but also small cores to achieve the world's leading power consumption. Huangshan 2S has higher computing efficiency, lower power consumption, implanted with a convolutional neural network acceleration technology NPU, greatly improving the computational performance of the local AI data, for the recognition of atrial fibrillation is 7 times faster than Huangshan 1, compared with the pure software algorithms to improve 26 times.
Compared to most instruction sets, the RISC-V architecture is characterized by open source, simple architecture, and ease of porting related systems. With three consecutive generations of chips using the RISC-V architecture, Huami's vision of building an ecosystem is evident.
Zepp OS is characterized by lightness, low power consumption, and openness. The Zepp OS system package is only 55MB, which is about 1/28th of Apple's watch OS, and it ensures that the system is lightweight and improves endurance, while maintaining a smooth operation and most of the internal interface frames. By enhancing the competitiveness of the self-developed system, Huami has more room for imagination.
And its operating system also not only supports Huangshan 2S, also supports third-party processors of other chip smartwatches, and even the entire RISC-V ecosystem. "As simple and easy as possible, it's easy to be able to realize intelligent interaction, and it's just smooth and natural for others to use it."
"Openness is what makes Huami's gene", said Huang Wang.
Wearable health code
Looking back at the past Huami released wearable devices and algorithms, health and exercise has become its main product features.
In the field of health, wearable devices can sense, record, analyze, and manage relevant data with the support of relevant software, allowing users to more intuitively perceive their physical condition. Huami centers on health, closely follows the actual needs and characteristics of wearable products, and practices the mission of "connecting health with technology".
Prior to this, Huami launched the heart rate engine, 24 hours a day to monitor the heart rate irregularity and atrial fibrillation, whether it is a heart attack, or stay up late at night caused by irregular heartbeat, any slight difference in the signal will be captured.
Not only that, Huami innovatively uses blood oxygen detection for sleep apnea syndrome, once monitoring that breathing is blocked and blood oxygen is rapidly decreasing, Huami's smartwatch will immediately vibrate to remind people and save their lives.
But people are complex organisms, technology and intelligence can not solve a lot of problems for the time being, such as blood pressure. Currently, hypertension has become a common disease in the world, and is the most important risk factor for cardiovascular disease. Data show that China's hypertensive patients have reached 245 million, and the number of deaths related to hypertension is as high as 2 million per year.
And using technology to monitor blood pressure, compared to heart rate is much more complex. Because heart rate is a measurement of frequency, it is sufficient to monitor the frequency of the pulse wave, and not so much the structural, morphologic, and correlative information of the pulse wave itself.
Blood pressure is not the same, blood pressure needs to monitor the pulse wave fluctuation information, not only the frequency of information, but also need to morphology information, with optical sensors for monitoring, access to relevant information, much more complex, and also by the skin, hair, sitting position and other individual differences in the impact.
Huami based on the third generation of sensors and blood pressure research algorithms, constantly collecting data from hypertensive patients to be continuously improved, successfully developed PumpBeats blood pressure monitoring engine. Smartwatches equipped with this engine can effectively capture blood pressure signals and waveforms, realizing 30-second one-button blood pressure measurement, which is an important step in the field of non-invasive, cuffless blood pressure measurement technology.
According to the data from the clinical trial conducted by Huami and Peking University Hospital***, the average absolute deviation of the PumpBeats blood pressure monitoring engine is less than 5.14 mmHg for systolic blood pressure and less than 4.88 mmHg for diastolic blood pressure, which fully verifies the reliability of the technology, by comparing it to the measured value of a standard electronic sphygmomanometer.
In the future, Huami will continue to promote 24-hour continuous blood pressure monitoring, realize the perfect combination of nighttime sleep monitoring and passive blood pressure monitoring, and expects to explore a new way to screen for hidden hypertension through the prolonged monitoring of smartwatches.
Active health "cure the disease" is the direction that Huami focuses on. Through technological research, more and more ordinary people can more easily access to their own body data, these data and wearable device data together, and finally will be integrated into the personal cloud health data, which is the health code of Huami wearable.
Based on Huami's own sensors, chips, and algorithmic strength, it realizes richer health monitoring functions and brings users more dimensional health data. By the end of 2020, the cumulative number of steps recorded by Huami's smart wearable devices exceeded 151 trillion steps, 12.8 billion nights of sleep records, and more than 120.8 billion hours of heart rate records.
With more and more data, the barriers to competition will get higher, the algorithms will get more accurate, and Huami's knowledge of the user's health condition will get deeper and deeper.
Huang Wang said, especially valuable APP, their underlying logic is clothing, food, housing and transportation. There is also a health, which is one of the most basic needs of people, in the field of health, Huami will produce core competitiveness.
It is also because of the tight grasp of the real needs of users, Huami's shipments, ranked steadily in the forefront. Data show that as of March 31, 2021, Huami intelligent health equipment global total shipments of more than 170 million units, in the first quarter of this year, Huami's own brand Amazfit, Zepp smartwatch shipments have been among the top four in the world.
On the road of technology connecting health, technology helps users' health, and health accomplishes Huami's wearable devices.
Creating a closed-loop health ecosystem
Any achievement is not inevitable, but from the moment you decide to do it, you continue to accumulate.
The data released by Huami shows that in the past three years, Huami has invested more than 400 million yuan in research and development in each of the past three years, and last year's investment reached 538 million yuan. If you compare other IoT companies in the same period, the amount has been realized in the amount of doubled investment.
High R&D investment, in exchange for Huami in the field of big health 1,000 patent applications. Among them, invention patents accounted for half, and nearly 100 core invention patent applications in the United States. From the perspective of overall competitiveness and business value, Huami has become one of the strongest wearable companies in the world in terms of shipments.
Huami is good at being small and smart, after all, it is different from Apple and other giants. Huang Wang has compared Huami and Apple, and believes that "Apple is relying on the brand, we are relying on technology, cost supply chain control".
At the product level, in addition to smart bracelets and smartwatches, Huami has also launched treadmills, running shoes and other related peripheral products, which can be multi-channel, multi-dimensional real-time monitoring of user health data. At the algorithmic level, Huami has also launched its own self-developed sports engine, personal health assessment system, heart rate engine, blood oxygen engine, sleep engine and so on.
Now, based on its self-developed chip, operating system, sensors, and AI algorithms, Huami has objectively begun the vertical integration of related industries. Users recognize the value of health, and they agree with Huami's products. From a systemic point of view, Huami has been laying out the industrial chain to create a closed-loop health ecosystem.
Not only that, Huami has cooperated with the team of academician Zhong Nanshan, medical health software technology company PAI Health, Royal DSM Group of the Netherlands, Prudential Group Asia, etc., to take the smartwatch as the entrance, establish a powerful human health data analysis engine, build a health big data platform, and construct a global health ecological capacity and potential.
It is worth noting that Huami's health products and services are not only limited to the C-end, but also for the B-end. For example, by investing in and promoting global portable MRI technology research and development, we are opening up the era of portable nuclear magnetic **** vibration, which is expected to enter the physical examination organizations and hospital outpatient clinics. It will also make it easier for ordinary people to access their own body data, which will be combined with wearable devices in the future to give them a clearer picture of their health.
In terms of long-term goals, Huami's ideal ecosystem is to connect health through various types of wearable devices under the same system to facilitate all aspects of people's lives.
The progress of technology will not stop, Huami began with hardware, but always human-centered, build "product + service" strategy of integration of hardware and software, step by step into the field of health services, which is the ecological dream of Huami.
Summary
The vitality of any form of wearable device depends on the ability it brings to the user. So to build better wearables, companies have to make them effective enough to give users a simple experience in the midst of complexity.
And around the health of the ecological Huami, how to make the role of smart wearable devices to play to the extreme, in the extreme state of changing people's future life, is the challenge of Huami, but also Huang Wang's persistence.
The past is a prelude, and everything begins with action and vision!