Technology and exercise: a marriage made in heaven
Exercise and technology would appear to be strange bedfellows. The development of labour-saving devices over the last century has removed much of our need for physical activity: washing clothes can be done by pressing a button, face-to-face communication by pulling a phone out of a pocket, getting to work by stepping into a car. While undoubtedly convenient, these advances have, in the words of ISEH consultant Mike Loosemore, “manufactured activity out of lives”: in the Western world we are markedly less physically active than our parents or grandparents.
However, recent technological and commercial developments may be helping to reverse this trend. Participants at the Friday afternoon session of the Exercise and Medicine conference heard from a number of speakers how technology can help people exercise, and help clinicians and researchers to measure the results.
Maneesh Sethi from Pavlok described how ‘wearable tech’: clothing and accessories that measure your heart rate and other vital signs during and after exercise, is increasingly attracting the interest of major manufacturers. The current wave of joggers with smartphones strapped to their arms looks set to give way to a new generation with information generated from sensors within the clothing itself. Dr Jack Kreindler of Jointly Health Ltd described how miniaturisation was enabling the collection and collation of data from wrist- and body-worn sensors, which could increasingly be read and analysed in real time.
Building active communities online
Bryan Snyder from AKQA demonstrated an X-Box game with built in sensors designed to map an individual’s movement during exercise to give real-time feedback and ‘buddying’, alongside the agency’s work to build ‘NikeFuel’ as an urban exercise brand; His colleague Lulu Skinner described how online communities and games were being used by people to encourage themselves and others to exercise more.
Dr Aiden Doherty, University of Oxford, highlighted a study comparing the reliability of wearable exercise sensors (accelerometers) with self-reporting, and found that people often significantly overestimate how much exercise they have taken! This pointed to the value of using wearable technology when evaluating programmes aimed at increasing exercise.
Following earlier presentations by the finalists, the day finished with the award of the Helal and Harries prize for research in the field of exercise medicine and was awarded to Sarah Morton of Imperial College London.
The second annual Exercise Medicine Conference was held on 20 and 21 June 2014 at the Royal Society of Medicine in London, and was sponsored by Technogym. The conference was introduced by Dr Mike Loosemore, Lead Consultant in Sport and Exercise Medicine at the ISEH and Lead Sports Physician for the South of England at the English Institute for Sport. Read highlights of day one (part one). Day two highlights to follow.