Fitbit’s founders designed a wearable for the whole family

FastCompany: Long before 2007 when the health tracker Fitbit single-handedly mushroomed the market for wearable technology, another wearable device had been dominating the niche for nearly 20 years. Life Alert, an emergency medical alert device company, had created a remote control device worn as a pendant that could connect people to emergency services at the click of a button (never forget its iconic tagline: “ I’ve fallen, and I can’t get up! ”). The target users were older adults, and the target customers, subtly, were the family members worried about them.

Now those two pioneering wearable devices have been spiritually melded into the Luffu Link, a health sensing and safety bracelet. It’s the first hardware product for Luffu , a health tracking system launched earlier this year by the cofounders of Fitbit, James Park and Eric Friedman. Designed as a centralized app for managing an entire family’s health, Luffu pulls in health data from medical providers, activity data from wearable monitors, schedules for medications and medical appointments, and self-logged details about everything from meals to emotions.

Using artificial intelligence , Luffu learns patterns over time, and proactively offers insights and alerts related to each user’s health. “It’s pretty much the command center of your family, where you integrate all the health data from your family, safety information, and other coordination tasks, and the system is highlighting what’s most urgent that the family needs to see, view, and act on at that moment,” Park says. The concept came out of Park’s and Friedman’s own experiences managing the health of aging parents and other family members, some living in other cities or states.

They found it increasingly challenging to juggle patient portals, medication schedules, appointments, dietary requirements, and the simple day-to-day check-ins to make sure people are okay. “There’s not a lot of great tools out there. There’s little piecemeal solutions,” Park says. Now in public beta testing, Luffu brings all that care management into one system, with individual profiles for every member of a family. The wearable Luffu Link extends it into the physical realm, with Fitbit-style monitoring combined with voice logging, GPS, and a Life Alert-style emergency alert button.

(Other non-Luffu devices are compatible with the system.) Like many wearable devices on the market, the Luffu Link passively tracks and analyzes activity, calories burned, sleep, resting heart rate, heart rate variability, breathing rate, and other standard health metrics. It also can be used actively, allowing users to employ voice commands to add details to their profile or check off their medications for the day, with the underlying AI processing it all. “Once the note goes up into the system, we’ll do something intelligent with it.

So like, ‘Yeah, I took my medication and I have two pills left.’ It should note that you took the medication and then also set a reminder that you should refill your prescription,” Park says. Whole family tracking Park sees the screenless Luffu Link wearable as a simpler way to manage the minutia of family healthcare; it’s capable of adding details to multiple user profiles, including kids, adults, aging family members, and pets. Park offers an example of a note a user might use the Luffu Link’s voice logging button to add to the system: Mom was really agitated today as I gave her her medication.

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The launch of Luffu by Fitbit's founders is significant for the brand/design industry as it introduces a family-oriented health tracking solution, which is a notable shift in the wearable tech market and highly relevant for brand strategy professionals focused on health tech innovations.