What happens when an edgy athletic apparel company and a cloud-delivered, cognitive computing program spewing, artificial intelligence system intertwine minds as one? Just ask Under Armour’s founder and CEO Kevin Plank and IBM’s president, chairman, and CEO Ginni Rometty about the world’s first comprehensive health and fitness insights application.
With the assistance of IBM Watson’s database of over 160 million Under Armour (UA) app users, medical research and personal comparative analytics, the UA Record app dives into more than just your morning jog and mid-day snack. “When it comes to digital health and fitness tracking, the past ten years have been about data collection,” said Kevin Plank, Founder and CEO, Under Armour. “We’re now at a point where a shift is occurring and consumers are demanding more from this information.”
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Through this partnership, UA will integrate IBM Watson’s data mining capabilities to develop an intense Cognitive Coaching system, transforming user engagement in overall nutrition, behavioral and performance management, and even environmental factors. Watson has even added visual recognition technology where users take pictures of their meals and the software identifies what they ate and its nutritional elements making macro-calculations that much easier for weight loss.
The pioneering health and fitness tracking features do not end there. Under Armour released a line of fitness products in its UA HealthBox ($400) at CES in Las Vegas last week. It is equipped with a heart rate monitor, blue tooth enabled scale, and smart band, all through a partnership with HTC.
The UA HealthBox will leverage the power that VP of Digital Fitness, Chris Globe, has regarding the implementation of the Watson powered app, UA Record. Previously at MapMyFitness, a fitness app acquired by Under Armour in 2013 for $150 million, Globe now has the brand power and hardware to guide the implementation of the new data wave of the health industry.
It is not the launch of a line of connecting devices, doing the same thing as a lot of other connecting devices that will lure users, but the ability for people to obtain personalized, evidence-based, medial information and metrics to amplify their training and nutritional lifestyle to the next level. If Under Armour is able to pull off this one-stop shop between the UA Record App, IBM Watson technology and HTC hardware, it will surely leave your current fitness band in the bottom of the sock drawer.