BioBeats evolves from stress app to measurer of well-being

British digital health startup BioBeats is evolving, in part because of technological advances and in part because of a hardware supply problem.
The hardware issue comes courtesy of Microsoft, which seems to be withdrawing from the wearables market by phasing out the Microsoft Band fitness tracker. BioBeats had issued the Microsoft Band 2 to 560 UK employees of French bank BNP Paribas for a pilot on workplace stress and wellness.
That study wrapped up in August. BioBeats said earlier this month that the startup collected more than 60 gigabytes of data and ran that information through the BioBeats artificial intelligence engine. Neither BioBeats nor the academic researcher who ran the study has released any tangible results yet, but the company said in a press release that “scientific findings include perceived/actual stress, links between stress and ruminators, and the outcome of breathing as an intervention.”
With the Microsoft Band not likely to be around much longer, BioBeats has begun a collaboration with Google, CEO David Plans said. The London-based startup is in the initial stage of hardware and software selection on that front.
Plans indicated that he believes the partnership will allow BioBeats to scale.
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