We know that Google has been working on its smart watch for quite some time. Not the Android Wear platform mind you, but an actual device that is made for clinical studies. That device has been officially (re)announced and is now known as the Verily Study Watch, enabling clinical researchers to passively capture health data.

Compared to wearables currently available on the market, Verily’s device offers scalable collection of rich and complex datasets across clinical and observational studies. Its architecture was tailored specifically for high quality signals and seamless usage, with consideration of the needs of observational studies, such as how continuous wear impacts a user’s experience.

In particular, the Verily Study Watch has a number of physiological and environmental sensors, including electrocardiogram (ECG), heart rate, electrodermal activity, and inertial movements. The device also boasts battery life of up to one week, large internal storage and data compression, a powerful processor that supports real time algorithms on the device, the robust, future-proof firmware that can be updated over-the-air updates, and the low-power, high-res display which is always on so that time is always shown.

The data collected by the Verily Study Watch is encrypted, then uploaded and processed in the cloud using Verily’s backend algorithms and machine learning tools. This infrastructure is highly scalable and can serve population studies consisting of large volumes of data.

The device will be used in several observational studies conducted by Verily’s partners, including the Personalized Parkinson’s Project, a multi-year study to identify patterns in the progression of Parkinson’s disease and provide a foundation for more personalized treatments.

Another case for the Study Watch will be in the forthcoming Baseline study, a longitudinal study exploring transitions between health and disease.

Going forward, Verily plans to incorporate Study Watch in a broad array of health applications.