ambiotex 2.0 – the smart wearable starts again in 2020: Your vital data. Mobile. On ECG level.
Tübingen, February 21, 2020 – With new management and new product lines ambiotex GmbH is taking a completely new start in 2020.
ambiotex, of which the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft is one of the shareholders, is the intelligent wearable, which thanks to the latest sensor technology and artificial intelligence is able to record the vital data of its users in medical quality and evaluate it scientifically in real time. The ambiotex wearable – a combination of a smart shirt with integrated ECG sensors, a magnetically attached TechUnit and a smartphone app – can be worn comfortably as a sports shirt or under normal clothing, is easy to use and also provides scientifically sound, doctor-level evaluations offline.
New on board is sales and turn-around specialist Christian Seidl, who took over the position of ambiotex CEO on January 1, 2020. For more than 20 years Seidl has held various senior management positions, including in the telecommunications sector, as founder of a solar project planning company and as consultant and mentor of tech start-ups with a focus on go-to-market strategies. In the ambiotex management Christian Seidl is responsible for business development, marketing, product development, hardware and software development.
Christian Seidl is supported by the new CFO Thomas Claussen. Claussen, Accenture partner for many years, is one of the founders and partners of ambiotex. As Chief Finance Officer he is now responsible for the areas of finance, administration, investor relations and systems.
Also new in the management team is Thomas Stormanns; after many years as interim manager in the field of marketing and communication – among others for DAX- and international and national IT and telecommunication companies – Stormanns takes over the role of Chief Marketing Officer for ambiotex.
ambiotex GmbH, founded in 2013, has been working on the one hand on the further development of the core product – an intelligent, easy to use wearable for non-invasive, scientifically precise measurement of heart rate and heart rate variability (HRV) – and on the other hand on numerous scientific projects with the interfaces artificial intelligence, occupational safety, occupational health management and competitive sports. The basis for ambiotex products is a development of the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits ( Fraunhofer IIS) in Erlangen. Currently ambiotex is working in this business area on a product in the field of occupational safety, which is funded by the EU and the state of Brandenburg and nominated by DEKRA for the Innovation Award 2019. The basis for this sponsored further development is the innogy HealthGuard which is marketed together with innogy SE.
The task of the new management is to place the ambiotex smart shirt successfully on the market in different new fields of application and to make ambiotex a national and international player in the field of smart wearables.
“The founding team, the previous management and all developers involved have done a really fantastic job in developing and advancing the ambiotex smart shirt”, says Christian Seidl. “Out of a small black box, a big vision and many years of research and development, since 2013 a product has been created that, in the opinion of many experts, has international potential to change the areas of personal fitness & wellbeing, professional sports, e-sports, occupational safety and corporate health management equally and sustainably for the better,” Christian Seidl is convinced.
Thanks to the latest ECG sensor technology, ambiotex is able to record the user’s vital data with almost medical precision; artificial intelligence and sophisticated algorithms evaluate this data scientifically in real time. This evaluation is compared using more than 15,000 real comparison persons on the basis of age and gender from the database of NEUROCOR, a spin-off of the Centre for Neuropsychological Research at the University of Trier.
Via the ambiotex app – available in the usual stores – or a desktop version, the data is evaluated, visualized and, if desired, shared. It has never been easier and cheaper to find out how stressed or fit someone really is. And it has never been more accurate and objective. Because even the best questionnaires cannot distinguish between supposed relaxation and real stress.
The technology behind ambiotex was developed in cooperation with Fraunhofer IIS. The smart shirt, in which the sensors for a very robust and also in movement very precise 1-channel ECG are firmly and flexibly processed, was developed by the Swabian company New Textile Technologies NTT; NTT produces functional clothing for many well-known international sportswear manufacturers in addition to the ambiotex smart shirt.
Due to the high quality of sensor technology and algorithms, ambiotex data is not only suitable for an extremely precise measurement of heart rate, but also for the analysis of individual heart rate variability (HRV) on ECG level. The latter is the basis for valid statements about the basic or current stress situation.
Those who know how their heart rate variability changes, have a better view of their health, can plan training times and rest periods during (e-)sports, or recognize stress triggers in their professional and private everyday life, detect risks of illness or prevent diseases.
But ambiotex does not only sensitize its user for stressful situations and daily form, but can even save lives in acute emergency situations. For example ambiotex also detects emergencies (hazard and dead man’s warning) or enables the user to determine his position via an app down to a few meters.
The ambiotex smart shirt with its ECG-accurate HRV recording also opens a completely new chapter in occupational health management: according to the German Occupational Health and Safety Act employers are obliged to keep an eye on the individual work-related psychological stress of their employees. This is usually done using error-prone questionnaires. The ambiotex smart shirt non-invasively measures the stress-relevant parameters objectively and individually, without the user having to do more than breathing. This ultimately leads to more objective and reliable results that meet the requirements of § 5 III No. 6 of the German Occupational Safety and Health Act.
“Thanks to pioneering spirit, sustainability and engineering skills ambiotex has gone from being a one-trick pony for running fans to a comprehensive solution provider when it comes to making medically precise statements on important vital parameters of a person despite of the simplest application – no matter if in private or professional environment. Fortunately, with this positioning we no longer have to explain whether a smartwatch or fitness wristband does the job just as well”, Christian Seidl concludes.