Biometrics Leader LifeQ Revolutionizes Healthcare with Disease Screening and Early Detection

ATLANTA, March 20, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- LifeQ, the company that uses globally-recognized watch brands to gather personalized, clinical-grade data, announced it can detect as many as 40 sleep and cardiovascular disorders with smart watches and other wearable devices, with an anticipated 100 diseases and disorders within the next two years—revolutionizing healthcare and improving consumers' lives. LifeQ co-founders Laurence (Laurie) Olivier, CEO, and Dr. Franco du Preez, Chief Science Officer, made the announcement.

"Wearable devices are the future of personalized medicine, providing continuous health monitoring and enabling the prevention of common diseases and disorders," stated Mr. Olivier. "There is an urgent need for accessible, clinical-grade insights on a broad scale for both healthy and sick humans, from young to old, preventative and curative, chronic and acute, whether before, during, or post-treatment. This coverage is now achievable—not with complex medical instruments, but with simple everyday wearables."

Smart watches and other wearables allow ongoing measurement of an additional layer of critical biometrics beyond the commonly available heart rate, skin temperature, and blood pressure, to sleep activity, respiratory rate, and daily fitness, that make clinical-grade health screening and monitoring possible. With this wealth of information, smart watches and other wearables are perfectly suited to monitor long-term health conditions to assist physicians and healthcare professionals ahead of diagnostics and during treatment, as well as consumers seeking to improve their health and wellness.

"LifeQ's mission is to help people age well," stated Dr. du Preez. "By delaying biological aging, reducing the probability of chronic disease, screening for the early onset of disease, as well as maximizing human performance, harnessing more energy, and gaining a deeper understanding of one's own unique body and health—lives may be transformed for the better."

LifeQ is integrated with top global brands, including Fossil, TAG Heuer, Montblanc, Suunto, and Xiaomi, and three companies in the global Fortune 50, comprising approximately 50% of all wearables manufacturers in the world, delivering connected health solutions that help people make better lifestyle choices every day.

"LifeQ complements and supports physicians and healthcare providers in their important diagnostic work, capturing biometrics 24/7, 365 days a year, flagging issues, and facilitating diagnosis and treatment," stated Dr. Armin Deffur, Chief Medical Officer. Consumers benefit from knowing their health state in a daily application, as well as what they have done to either improve or penalize their current state.

LifeQ-enabled devices will help busy clinicians to detect important medical conditions, enable data-driven disease classification as well as facilitate disease prevention. Instead of relying purely on a verbal history from a patient, the period leading up to a clinical presentation may be examined at a more granular level.

Chronic disease affects 50% of the population and represents more than 85% of healthcare costs today according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; it is also the hardest to detect. LifeQ's technology, already integrated into some of the world's most popular brands with other daily utilities beyond health monitoring, assists with flagging chronic disease by providing the longitudinal data needed to establish a baseline that may then be monitored over time to determine changes in biometrics—some of which may only be picked up over years.

Acute disease, which represents a sudden and severe health problem, can affect every person at any age and may often go unnoticed until the patient has already become ill. LifeQ's technology has successfully flagged acute disease in a broad range of participants over the past several years, including during the COVID-19 crisis, by flagging and enabling treatment and preventing spread, often in patients that did not exhibit symptoms.

Screening for and flagging disease using wearables is possible through LifeQ's unique combination of photoplethysmography (PPG) and computational systems biology approach. Predictive models that are contextualized with respect to existing scientific knowledge and causal relationships enable the flagging of diseases and disorders that may otherwise be impossible to recognize until they have already progressed.

LifeQ may flag such sleep disorders and diseases as narcolepsy, sleep apnea, restless legs syndrome, insomnia, rapid eye movement (REM) sleep behavior disorder, sleepwalking, night terrors, hypersomnia, circadian rhythm disorders, and periodic limb movement disorder (PLMD).

Cardiovascular disorders that may be flagged include hypertension, myocardial dysfunction, high cardiac output states, hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy (HOCM), aortic stenosis, bradyarrhythmia, tachyarrhythmia, atrial fibrillation, bigeminy, trigeminy, and arteriosclerosis.

LifeQ's mission is to positively impact the current global shortage of primary care physicians by providing critical pre-diagnostic biometric data and enabling qualified care professionals to perform a first-order triage and treatment of diseases and disorders that would not require the attention of a primary care physician.

Wearable devices will soon enable insights for hundreds of diseases, providing a personalized action plan and a truly preventative approach to healthcare.

About LifeQ

Founded in 2010 (incorporated in 2014), LifeQ has become the leading independent provider of biometrics and health insights derived from wearable devices. Trusted by some of the world's most prominent brands, including Tag Heuer, Louis Vuitton, Hublot, Montblanc, Fossil Group, Samsung, Suunto, Xiaomi, and Motorola, LifeQ's solutions go beyond the everyday smartwatch. By providing a 24/7 lens into the body, LifeQ offers a holistic view of the way various everyday behaviors and environments influence the health of users, covering a fast-expanding suite of physiological systems of the human body. Generating highly accurate biometrics for consumers, athletes, and the acutely and chronically ill allows for the earlier detection of health problems, better management of existing problems, and disease prevention. Consumers, wearable device companies, insurers and reinsurers, health-tech companies, clinicians, researchers, and analytics companies all benefit from LifeQ's multiplicity — representing the future of healthcare. For more information, please visit www.lifeq.com.