5 smart products we could do with right now!

Every generational shift brings its own bouquet of products. The desktop, the Internet, the smartphone: They all spawned their own industries. The Covid-19 crisis is such a generational game changer. Many new products will come as a result of it in the future and here’s a looking at some that could be quite handy.

1. Transparent Bluetooth masks: People are talking of having a lockdown for 3 months, 6 months and there are even some wild demands for having it till 2022. Plus Covid-19 is actually SARS 2 and a Coronavirus can mutate every month. So, pandemic scares could be the new normal. People wearing masks all the time is dangerous (identity issues and theft could become easy) and irritating. This could easily be addressed with transparent Bluetooth masks. They would still allow you to still see the features of the other person’s face. They would keep you in touch with your mobiles. The mask could have sensors that detect body temperature and other factors that to know if you are well or not.

2. Super IoT health bands: IoT wearable health bands can already detect body motion, heart rates and form some sort of ECG monitor. In the future they could be re-engineered to test your moods, stress levels and even analyse your sweat. They might be able to detect the air quality around you (with relation to pollutants and pathogens) and alert you. You could have a GPS air map which tells you about the quality of air that you are headed for. These details could be alerted to your family and your local doctor/hospital if you should so desire. This could be connected to your Bluetooth mask.

3. Home testing med kits: Defunct medical startup Theranos said that they had “devised blood tests that needed only very small amounts of blood and could be performed very rapidly using small automated devices”. Unluckily that turned out to be a fraud. But it still can be done. It’s theoretically possible and now the world, the medical industry and scientific research community has the will to do so—fast! We could well have a spate of med startups now that could deliver it. Just do a basic test at home to know if you’re in the red or not and no need to go to the hospital.

4. Super monitoring apps: One smart alec quipped that privacy works only if either everyone has privacy or no-one has. We know the governments of the world are monitoring our every move. We just demand that we get it in the form of Big Data. From now on governments will be monitoring the populace and checking for things like disease spikes in any part of the world. Well, all they have to do is share that Big Data in real time to the consumers. The concept of red, orange and green zones could be made permanent and updated in real time. They could also include war zones and include natural disasters.

5. The return of Google Glass: In the era of social distancing and the need for more information immediately about your surroundings, it’s high time that Google Glass made a comeback. We all seem to be destined to be loners when we walk out into the streets. What if we combined all of the above? A glass mask that incorporated protection against pathogens, Bluetooth-enabled, with a Google Glass type interface, connected with your IoT band and with access to all the global real-time apps? Now that would really be something!