With Samsung’s first Galaxy Ring and Galaxy Watch Ultra launching at Galaxy Unpacked in Paris, Samsung’s health plans come into sharp focus. They can best be described as ambitious, grounded in the realities of our changing global demographics, the limits of what people will use, and the current state of AI.
Dr. Hon Pak, Vice President and Head of Digital Health Team, MX Business at Samsung Electronics, dermatologist and leader of Samsung’s Health Team, oversees a mix of new health measures, conversational AI and a few new wearables about to be tested in a market full of alternatives.
He realizes that perhaps the greatest challenge is to guide us on our healthcare journey.
“Everyone knows what to do and then we find it a bit difficult. So our goal with our products and software is to simplify healthcare as much as possible,” Pak said during a roundtable discussion in Paris.
“Simplicity” is a theme Pak has returned to repeatedly. It might seem counterintuitive given watches that can now not only track your heart rate, sleep, activity level, heart rate variability during sleep, blood oxygen levels, and a host of other metrics, but now offer sleep apnea detection and a new energy score.
Pak didn’t necessarily disagree with the proposition that it might all be a bit too much for consumers, who are less interested in scores than in outcomes.
“We’ve already gotten that feedback in the original test of what we wanted to put in. So we’re tweaking it to make it more understandable. I think the bigger thing you’re bringing up is, are we bringing in too many scores, too many insights, are we confusing people? And how do we simplify this, because that’s our journey anyway.”
Pak told me that this journey would eventually include a turnoff to a simpler place.
“One of the things we’re actively planning is, ‘Can we create a purposeful user experience where someone who logs into Samsung Health, regardless of what devices they have, says, ‘This is my purpose, this is what I care about.’ Based on priorities and preferences, we start to focus on what matters to you.”
I think the main point you’re making is: have we brought too many scores and insights now? Aren’t we confusing people?
That’s part of an indefinite future, of course. In the meantime, Samsung will train its new Galaxy Ring and Galaxy Watch Ultra (and Galaxy Watch 7) customers on a suite of new features, measurements, scores and AI-powered interactions that serve a larger purpose.
The world is changing, getting older, really. Millions of people are living into old age or advanced years, while healthcare costs are skyrocketing, and there is a clear shortage of healthcare workers. Dr. Pak told us that the healthcare industry is shifting from hospitals and care centers to home care. The tools and insights produced by Samsung Health are designed to help “understand who we are, where we are in terms of different health parameters that then help us change the right behaviors to the extent that we can prevent some of these diseases from happening so that we can thrive as we age,” Pak said.
While Samsung Health spans multiple devices and includes countless features, some new core features could change the way you think about your wellness.
Perhaps the most interesting is the least quantifiable. It’s a new energy score. And before you imagine comparing your energy score to a friend’s, know that there is no “gold standard” for this.
Developed by the University of Georgia, Energy Score starts by using the sensors in the Galaxy Watch 7, Galaxy Watch Ultra, and/or Galaxy Ring to measure the quality of your heart rate, sleep, sleep heart rate assessment, and sleep heart rate variability. When you wake up in the morning, Samsung Health presents you with a score that appears to indicate how ready you are to take on the day.
Samsung is upping the ante here, however, by introducing its first health-based LLM, a conversational AI that can look at the score and then make suggestions about what you can do to improve the health assessment. It’s not using any other data collected on your phone or watch for now. “The work is dedicated to sensors for now,” Dr. Pak said. “You have to be careful because of privacy concerns.”
Still, this is a significant moment for Samsung’s AI commitment and efforts to use multiple AI and generative touchpoints to paint a holistic picture of you. Not to augment third-party data collection efforts, but to help you.
“The Energy Score is our first step toward leveraging AI to create a more holistic understanding of the four pillars of health,” Pak said.
While your energy score, which may also depend on other factors such as age, is not directly comparable to that of others, Dr. Pak admitted that at some point, some sort of normalization and perhaps even an average could emerge based on the data collected to determine an average energy score.
One of the things we’re actively planning is, ‘Can we create a purposeful user experience where when someone logs into Samsung Health, regardless of what devices they have,
Dr. Pak, and perhaps Samsung, seem open to change and adaptation, assuming they have enough data, an understanding of how people use these systems, and can keep user privacy intact. Simplicity and a frictionless experience are important.
When we talked about the hurdles of doing something like an ECG or Spo2 measurement (sitting completely still and holding multiple fingers on the smartwatch), Dr. Pak told me, “We want to move away from on-demand and try to be passive.”
What struck me during our conversation was that Dr. Pak wasn’t fixated on the new Galaxy Ring. Sure, he talked about the concave design and how it puts sensors closer to your finger and how a ring makes sense because not everyone wants to wear a smartwatch to sleep. But the stated goal isn’t a smart ring on every finger. It’s the broader adoption of Samsung’s ecosystem that could lead to better health insights for consumers. Dr. Pak told us that he sees potential for synergies when Samsung wearables are worn together. Perhaps, he told us, if you wear the Galaxy Ring and Galaxy Watch together, you might see a boost in sleep tracking accuracy.
The long-term dream is that hardware, software and AI work together to passively identify health problems and then, in collaboration with an LLM and conversational AI, suggest ideas to mitigate these problems.
“We’re not trying to be a ring company, we’re not trying to be a watch company. We’re trying to be a company that cares for people in their everyday lives and provides the best devices that meet the needs of those people, which are diverse,” said Dr. Pak.