Withings has made a habit of gracing the CES floor with some clever health-based consumer tech devices. It looks like this year’s show is no exception, with the outfit announcing the Withings BeamO, a multi-functional device for self-conducting medical checkups at home.
Billed as a multiscope, it’s a thermometer on steroids, allowing you to not just check your temperature like the outfit’s contactless Thermo device, but also your measure blood oxygenation level, conduct a medical-grade ECG, and even listen to the sound that your heart and lungs make like a stethoscope. It’s like an early version of a sci-fi-worthy medical tricorder. No need to leave your home for a quick checkup – this thing can measure all of that, log it in the app, and give you the option to share it with your doctor if you want a medical professional’s opinion.
The Withings BeamO is a small device measuring around the size of a typical AC remote, so you can keep it in the bathroom cabinet, a first-aid kit, or any other area of the house. Despite its compact size, it houses a powerful medical tool that combines four different sensors inside its enclosure. On one end, you get a contactless thermometer that can measure body temperature by simply pointing it at the temporal artery, a blood vessel on the side of the forehead, making it a lot faster and more convenient than traditional thermometers.
On the opposite end, it gets a piezoelectric sensor that can record the sound of a user’s heart and lungs when they breathe, essentially turning it into a stethoscope. We don’t know if you can pair your Bluetooth headphones with the device to hear those sounds, although you can probably use the same cans with your phone to hear it from the app. The device itself won’t offer any advice based on the sounds, as they believe that kind of data is best interpreted by actual doctors. It will also save the recordings, so you can share them with your physician if you want to do a virtual consultation.
The Withings BeamO also gets a pair of sensors on the side, namely an oximeter for measuring your blood oxygenation and an ECG for heart rate readings, with accompanying real-time charts for both readings available from the integrated screen out front. As it turns out, you can also use the ECG sensor for spotting cardiovascular issues, such as irregular heart rates and atrial fibrillation, although they’re still in the process of getting FDA clearance for those features. Chances are, both will be onboard, though, by the time this thing actually comes out middle of the year.
According to the outfit, you can conduct a full checkup using all four sensors in under a minute, so you can literally make this a part of your daily routine if you’re into that. This way, you can get a detailed historical record of various medical readings that your primary physician can review to get them a better picture for your overall health. Up to eight users can use a single device, so one of these should cover most single-family households.
The Withings BeamO comes out in June, with an expected price of $250.
