Together with Medtronic, WellDoc and SDI Health, Ford is looking into ways to make the SYNC platform support several health-related applications, including glucose device connectivity and monitoring capability, location-based allergy and pollen reports and voice-controlled, cloud-based health management services.
With the new applications, Ford targets two main categories of the population: people with diabetes and those with asthma and allergies. That's a potentially huge customer pool, as recent data has shown that nearly 26 million have diabetes.
The apps under development are meant to allow those with diabetes, for instance, to constantly be aware of their glucose levels, even when behind the wheel of a car. For those with allergies, the system is meant to monitor the pollen levels of the area the car and driver and passing through.
And this is only the beginning, says Ford, even if the research into this field is only in its infancy and far from becoming a market product. In the not-so-distant future however, Ford plans to expand the “medical” services it offers by including in the SYNC array of technologies information about heart rate, relaxation and reducing stress.
“Ford SYNC is well known in the industry and with consumers as a successful in-car infotainment system, but we want to broaden the paradigm, transforming SYNC into a tool that can help improve people’s lives as well as the driving experience,” said Paul Mascarenas, chief technology officer and vice president, Ford Research and Innovation.
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