Trying to gauge the demand or thought process of a potential customer for a product being developed in my company.
The product would be an electronic blanket, that can gradually warm anyone up, even from wet activities and take vital signs from the people wearing the blanket
Vital signs:
• Body Temperature
• Heart Rate
• Heart Rate Variability (HRV)
• Respiratory Rate
• Oxygen Saturation (SpO2)
• Blood Pressure (if using specialized sensors or cuffs)
• Electrocardiogram (ECG) for heart rhythm monitoring
• Skin Conductance or Electrodermal Activity (EDA) for stress levels
• Blood Flow (using Doppler ultrasound sensors, if applicable)
Does this sound like an attractive product to bring out on hiking or dangerous climbs/activities outdoors?
Sounds bulky and impractical. Heating stuff takes a lot of energy, how are you imagining this being powered? Maybe this would be more interesting to a SAR team.
Also, my watch does all those biometric measurements and I find them useful exactly 0% of the time.
No but if it is energy efficient you might want to market it to vanlifers, car campers, RVers, sports fans who might be sitting in a stadium watching a game. With hiking it has to have a practical use for the weight you are carrying. Electric blanket would be exceptionally luxurious and thereby unnecessary.
The average hiker doesn’t have any use for knowing SpO2, BP, RR, etc. The only people who would need to know this are emergency services, and they already have equipment to take these measurements. The sensors would also need to be registered medical devices to have any validity.
As for the blanket, a solution for warming up casualties already exists in the form of mylar casualty blankets. They’re pretty effective and take up almost no weight or space.