Healbe GoBe2 proves high accuracy to measure calorie intake

Healbe and the University of California Davis collaborate on a study focusing on calorie counting ability in a new wearable smartband

The Foods for Health Institute at the University of California Davis recently completed a validation study of an innovative health monitoring smartband, the Healbe GoBe2. A 14 day study was conducted on 27 adult volunteers between the ages 18-40 years old, 11 men and 16 women. The results of the study confirm the accuracy of the Healbe GoBe2 in automatic tracking of digested calories.

Calorie counting accuracy was assessed by comparing data from the manually recorded intake of volunteers and the data from the GoBe2. Study meals were prepared in a UC Davis commercial kitchen by trained food service personnel following a stringent HACCP protocol.

A research team analyzed the calorie content of each individual menu item. They weighed, recorded, portioned, and served the food and recorded plate-waste for all study volunteers at each meal served in the dining facility. To determine how well the device and its algorithms estimated the actual diet of volunteers, the correlation between recorded intake and data from the GoBe2 was examined. Data were transformed into three-day rolling averages, and the GoBe2 accuracy was 87%. Over the two week period, the GoBe2 showed an accuracy of 89.6% in measuring calorie intake.

The ability of the Healbe GoBe2 to so accurately track calorie digestion significantly differentiates it from other wearable health monitoring smartbands. The level of accuracy exceeds the effectiveness of comparable devices, as other wearables rely on a human recording of diet and calorie ingestion, and the potential for human error in that process typically puts accuracy at well below 50%.

Sara Schaefer, Ph.D., Associate Director of Technology and Education at the Foods for Health Institute led the study and is excited about the potential to learn more about people’s unique diets and metabolism using non-invasive technologies.  She is creating a laboratory for studying the measurable processes of metabolism and plans to use the GoBe smart band in future research and interventions.

By creating a wearable device like the GoBe2, Healbe aims to be a non-invasive, easy to use, and highly accurate tool to help people everywhere improve their overall health, reach their weight loss goals and subsequently reduce the likelihood of obesity-related diseases.