Obesity is a growing concern in Ireland, especially amongst children, but ExerWise hopes to make these concerns a thing of the past.
What is ExerWise?
ExerWise is a fitness tracker with a difference. While you may be familiar with the likes of fitbit or Jawbone fitness trackers, the ExerWise device is aimed at children. Children need to get an hour of exercise per day and while some will exceed this, many don’t. Largely, this may be due to an increase in smart device usage and spending more time online. The team at ExerWise are looking to harness this love for technology that younger generations have.
How does the device work?
What we can probably now refer to as “traditional” fitness trackers require some sort of secondary device to visualise the various metrics captured during exercise. As the ExerWise is aimed at children, this isn’t a suitable approach. Instead, the device has three lights which indicate how much of the child’s daily sixty minutes of activity has been achieved. There is an app available to get a more detailed breakdown, allowing parents to better understand their children’s activity.
The real potential success visible, even from the early prototypes, is how the device looks. It’s something you would expect young kids to wear, full of technology and colour. There is also huge potential for a wearable like this to become popular because of playground bragging rights over activity levels.
Who is behind ExerWise?
ExerWise has been designed and developed by three former engineering students of NUI Galway. In true entrepreneurial spirit, this talented bunch have turned down the advances of various multinational companies, opting instead for developing what they believe is a real weapon in the war on childhood obesity.
How can I get one of these fitness trackers?
The team’s Kickstarter campaign is slightly removed from the norm in that you will not be rewarded with a device for backing them. As they are in the early stages, the ExerWise team opted instead for some extremely creative rewards from clothing to personalised tours of the manufacturing facility. The team have opted for this as they’ve seen so many Kickstarter campaigns lead to months worth of waiting.
At the end of the day, this is a great campaign to support in general as the tracker could make a real change to children’s health. Support ExerWise now on Kickstarter.
