Is Apple Developing a Smart Ring?

A newly filed patent application suggests that the high tech giant is at least considering the possibility.

Chris Newmarker

Why monitor health with a smart watch when you can do it with a smart ring?

Apple on Thursday in a U.S. patent application described the "need for electronic devices with faster, more efficient methods and interfaces for interacting and/or controlling external electronic devices." The potential solution Apple is proposing in the patent application is a wearable ring device, and it has health monitoring implications, too.

"In some embodiments, the wearable ring device further includes a biometric sensor for sensing biometric information of the user and/or a near-field-communication transmitter for transmitting data related to the user," Apple says in the patent application.

The biometric sensor would collect information on heart rate, temperature, motion, cardiac rhythm, perspiration, and galvanic skin response, according to the patent application. "This information may be collected and displayed by the ring computing device and/or a paired electronic device so that the user may monitor his or her health, fitness, activity, or caloric energy expended."

Apple has had similar goals with its Apple Watch that hit the market this year, though it debuted with fewer health sensors than were previously rumored. Some of the features work also in tandem with an iPhone, not the best situation for someone who is going for a jog.

The Wall Street Journal even suggested that the Cupertino, CA-based tech giant originally envisioned the Apple Watch as a next-gen health-tracker, but it instead offers fairly prosaic fitness monitoring capabilities by 2015 standards: heart rate and activity levels.

Meanwhile, USA Today's Matt Krantz points out that Apple Watch does not seem to be moving the needle for Apple sales, that many potential watch users may be waiting for a lower-price, next-generation model.

It makes sense, then, that Apple may be considering a smart ring.

Rings have already been explored for medical device purposes. For example, MIT researchers last year announced a prototype ring with a camera that allows a visually impaired person to "read" by scrolling a finger along a line of text--with software allowing a mobile phone or laptop to speak the words to the blind person in real time.

Smart rings can have many technical challenges, though, with some asking whether hardware becomes increasingly less useful as it shrinks to a ring size. 

Chris Newmarker is senior editor of Qmed and MPMN. Follow him on Twitter at @newmarker.