Sweat Tech On A Big Stage

At South by Southwest this week, sports drink pioneer Gatorade has made a big splash with a well choreographed and widely covered leap into the tech space.  CNBC declared it among the best brand experiences of SXSW Interactive.  Read on to see why this is of special interest to CincyTech.

Gatorade generated a lot of buzz for the sensor-equipped “smart cap” bottle it’s developing to deliver customized hydration to individual athletes.  It links with an electronic sweat sensing patch worn on the skin, that measures and transmits real time information about sodium, potassium and chloride levels in sweat.  That information would guide an athlete to whichever one of 12 different fluid formulas would best help them to replenish and recover.  

You can see the cap and patch in a Macworld video here. This is exciting to the team here at CincyTech, because we are very familiar with the foundational sweat sensing technology that has become a key aspect of Gatorade’s push.  In fact, if you were among the hundreds who attended our 2015 Annual Big Breakfast + Startup Showcase, you might have seen an earlier version of the underlying technology in action.  

It’s the innovative work of Eccrine Systems, a portfolio company built around technology and IP licensed exclusively out of the University of Cincinnati. The company is developing non-invasive sweat sensing systems for medicine, industry and sport.

Last May, Eccrine Systems announced it had selected Virginia-based CoreSyte as its worldwide athletic partner.  This aligns with its business plan to closely collaborate with downstream, market-savvy partners in different verticals, each of whom would integrate Eccrine’s technology innovations into their products.  At the time, CoreSyte was not a household name, but this week on a big stage in Austin, Texas, it’s proven to be a prescient choice.  

Here's why:  as part of its tech splash, Gatorade announced partnerships with four technology companies.  Three are widely recognizable: Facebook, Twitter, and Spotify. The fourth is CoreSyte, which is providing the biosensing sweat patch.

“I can’t imagine a better start for our athletics collaboration,” comments Robert Beech, Eccrine’s CEO and co-founder.

“CoreSyte and Eccrine have taken a big step forward together in a large market space that increasingly demands the best science and physiological data.  It’s a great example of the world-class applications and opportunities that will be enabled by this next generation of non-invasive biosensing wearables.”