Personally, I don't believe Wello iPhone case/health tracker works

In an increasingly competitive market for health monitoring, the Wello iPhone 5/5S case is going all-in-one.

It reckons that if you hold it for a few seconds, via Bluetooth its app can provide your heart rate, blood pressure, blood oxygen levels, temperature and heart ECG waves.

There's also for a peripheral you blow into to test your lung function.

Now, I'm all for making the qualified self as easy as possible, but accuracy must come into the picture somewhere.

I'm pretty skeptical about heart rate monitors that aren't chest straps so accuracy taking your blood pressure - a metric I love - through your fingers sounds suspicious to me.

Still, Azoi, the team behind Wello, seems legit and has been working on their tech for a couple of years. It will also be available for Android devices, only not as a case.

Guess we'll find out more when the Wello iPhone case - currently available for pre-order priced $199/£120 - is released.

Softbank invests in NeuroSky for "biosensor technology solutions"

When it comes to wearable technology, it might seem like the brain activity brigade have fallen over the cutting-edge.

Companies such as US outfit NeuroSky have been working on devices that detect and use brain waves for years - at least in terms of applications such as gaming.

It's never really got to point of launching consumer hardware though, and that's despite raising over $40 million.

Now, however, NeuroSky has hooked up with Japanese conglomerate Softbank in what's being called a "significant investment from SoftBank Corp. to form a strategic partnership with SoftBank Mobile Corp.".

The deal will see NeuroSky working on real-time personalized health and wellness services to be delivered over the mobile internet. Significantly, these will be in the area of electrocardiography and multi-function cardio monitoring rather than brain waves. 

Ahead of the pulse

Despite my note about the Danger of Data, there appears to be a strong move in the industry when it comes to heart monitoring.

As we all know, wearing a chest band is the best way (to-date) of measuring heart rate, but people don't like wearing these monitors or the additional cost.

Instead, they want heart monitor built into existing watch or bracelets. Indeed, Withings has a small pulse meter built into its Pulse pod tracker, although this isn't for tracking during exercise.

Perhaps the answer is new techniques for measuring heart rate. One interesting approach is the ability to measure the tiny amount of redding on the face using a web cam as each heart beat forces blood into the skin's capillaries

The face is useful in this regard because it has a large area and a large volume of blood flow. I don't think this sort of technique would work if integrated into a watch.

In that regard, I think Adidas is using more conventional monitoring in terms of its $399 miCoach Smart Run watch, which contains a heart rate monitor.

Yet now we hear that ex-Nokia outfit PulseOn has raised €1 million in VC funding to commercialise its optical heart rate monitor technology.

The race is certainly on...