Business

B-Secur in new US collaboration on next-generation wearables

B-Secur chief operating officer Ben Carter
B-Secur chief operating officer Ben Carter

NEXT generation in biometrics specialist B-Secur in Belfast is to collaborate with global technology company Texas Instruments to help accelerate the design of next-generation consumer wearable devices.

The alliance will provide high-performing sensing capabilities for devices like premium smart watches and medical grade heart-rate monitors, enabling advanced features for identification, wellness and health monitoring in Internet of Things (IoT) devices.

And it follows B-Secur earlier this year receiving US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) clearance for its innovative HeartKey ECG technology, which consists of a suite of powerful heart algorithms that combine user identification, health, and wellness to generate accurate data encrypted through the user’s unique heartbeat.

Alan Foreman, chief executive of the company, which is headquartered at Catalyst and which emplys 35 engineers, said: “This latest announcement is hugely significant and will enable medical-grade heart health monitoring to become widely available in the consumer wearables sector.

“As more and more wearable and IoT devices adopt ECG technology, supplying a fully integrated, high-performance solution with Texas Instruments means our customers around the world can bring their own consumer wearable products to market quicker and with greater confidence.”

Karthik Soundarapandian at Texas Instruments added: “The trend in consumer electronics is to add more health monitoring into smartwatches and other wearables, which can help health professionals with early detection and prevention of disease.”