1. How does VivoWatch calculate PTT?
VivoWatch employs a variety of sensor information and computations to determine your body's pulse-transit time (PTT). The key principle behind this is what's known as the pulse-wave velocity, or PWV. Data from both the ECG and PPG sensors, along with estimated arm length, is passed through an AI-powered algorithm.

2. How does VivoWatch calculate arm length?
When setting up your VivoWatch you will be asked to supply your height, and other personal details. After a calibration process, it is able to calculate your arm length with good precision.

3. What is the point of all this?
The sensors and AI algorithm work in tandem to learn about your body and health status, providing you with clear insights into your day-to-day well-being. Vital data, including heart rate, heart-rate variability, PTT, PWV, blood oxygen (SpO2) and autonomic-nerve status, feed back into the algorithm – so that over time VivoWatch becomes precisely tailored to your physiology and health. That, incidentally, is why we recommend against loaning your VivoWatch to someone else!

For convenient, accurate monitoring of your blood-oxygen levels, or SpO2 as it's also known, VivoWatch is engineered with different sensors. The first is an optical sensor that works continuously in the background, no matter what you're doing, be walking or sleeping. It uses reflected light to monitor the blood flow in your wrist. The second monitoring technology is a real-time sensor that's built into the side of the watch, and provides signal strength that is up to 100X more sensitive than the first sensor – so it is great for fast, accurate readings. Between them, these two sensors and an advanced algorithm that's powered by artificial intelligence (AI) are able to provide you with precise, detailed insights into your blood-oxygen levels.

VivoWatch calculates two parameters that respectively we call the Body Harmony index the autonomic nervous system (ANS) age, or Body Age. To determine these, information from the PPG sensor is fed into an AI-powered algorithm to detect both heart-rate variability and other factors – allowing us to show what are known as the sympathetic and parasympathetic status.

Your heart's sympathetic status can be thought of as your body's throttle. When your muscles tighten, your heart must beat faster. This will typically be when you're in a state of excitement or exertion.

The parasympathetic status, on the other hand, is akin to a brake. When you begin to wind down, your muscles loosen and the mind calms, allowing you to enter a state of rest, relaxation or sleep.

The idea behind VivoWatch's Body Harmony index and Body Age is to help you achieve the best balance between activity and relaxation, helping you to avoid high-risk situations and alerting you to times when it's best to step back a little.

ASUS VivoWatch is hugely popular with users around the world, but its advanced monitoring technologies have also brought it to the attention of respected medical institutes – including the Show Chwan Memorial Hospital in Taiwan.

The hospital's management decided they would like to offer a premium-tier telemedicine service for patients. The ambition was to provide VIP clients with access to virtual health checks, to act as an intermediate service to traditional, bi-annual physical check-ups.

That's where VivoWatch came in. The Show Chwan Memorial Hospital's health center now provides select patients with the ASUS wearable, along with the ASUS HealthConnect app, allowing key data about well-being to be monitored and collected. This information can then be transferred automatically to the hospital's medical personnel for review. After analysis, the patient is offered advice on how to adjust their lifestyle to improve or sustain their overall health.

Commenting on the choice of ASUS as a partner, and VivoWatch as the technology enabler, president of Show Chwan Health Care System, Dr. Ming-Ho Huang, said: “We aim to treat patients like family. To this end, we innovate continuously, evaluating new medical technologies, knowledge and equipment. Our advanced health-check service, enabled by ASUS VivoWatch, has equipped our professional medical staff with cutting-edge technology. We look forward to continuing our collaboration with ASUS to advance our medical offerings through the power of VivoWatch – empowering both our staff and patients to enjoy more comprehensive health services.”

The ASUS collaboration with Show Chwan Memorial Hospital goes deeper than just VivoWatch. ASUS has also joined forces with the respected Taiwanese healthcare provider to create an innovation center dedicated to the design and development of AI software and other applications for medical use.

The first project of this close cooperativeeffort is an AI-imaging solution for early detection of lung adenocarcinoma – an aggressive form of cancer. Currently, this project is in the development stage, with the related medical paper for this innovative productexpected to be published product in 2022.

The two partners are leveraging their respective expertise to bring this AI-imaging solution to life. For its part, the Show Chwan Memorial Hospital is collecting the necessary medical data and providing professional medical recommendations for the development of the product.On the ASUS side, our team is charged with creating and evolving both the hardware, AI algorithm and wider software development for thetechnology platform.

ASUS and Show Chwan Memorial Hospital are also looking to work together beyond the development of this innovative AI-imaging solution for early detection of lung adenocarcinoma. Over the next couple of years, our teams will join forces to consider how our combined knowledge can bring forth technological leaps in the fields of personal health tracking, portable ultrasound equipment and other AI-powered medical software solutions.