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Azumio has unveiled a new iPhone app called Argus to allow consumers to track their fitness, diet and sleeping patterns in a single mobile tool.
Launched July 3, the free app consolidates data from devices such as Withings’ weight scale and the MapMyFitness app as well as other Azumio apps such as Instant Heart Rate and Sleep Time, which tracks sleep cycles.
“The most frequent request from our user base of over 40 million customers has been for something that would combine all their health and fitness data into one place,” Bojan Bostjancic, CEO of Azumio, said in a statement. “This is exactly what we’ve done with Argus—it serves as the fabric for your wearable devices and other health apps and presents your data in context.”
The app also allows users to track their hydration, caffeine consumption and vital signs.
Argus is part of a growing number of mobile apps and devices that monitor a user’s fitness routines, and the app can collect data from many of these third-party products.
“I think we just hit the sweet spot in the timing of these things,” Peter Kuhar, CTO and co-founder, told eWEEK.
When a user presses a cell on the iPhone for 2 seconds, the app will aggregate data for that type of information, such as the number of steps and data from running sessions. It updates data from multiple apps instantly.
Users can snap pictures of their daily meals to create a food diary. The app can then map the photos according to groups such as fruit, vegetables, protein, dairy, grain and fat.
Through the app, people can analyze correlations between data points, such as heart rate versus the number of steps taken or oily food intake compared with sleep patterns.
Users can gain an awareness of how their activities are connected to their health, Kuhar said.
“We can correlate your daily movements with quality of sleep,” he noted.
Social networking features in the app allow users to create groups on Facebook to share food photos and data on workout sessions.
Argus uses the iPhone’s gyroscope, GPS and accelerometer sensors to track a user’s activities. Algorithms then provide context for this data.
Kuhar acknowledged that this tracking of activities could alarm some users.
“Everything is safely stored on our servers, so it shouldn’t be an issue in most cases, but some people are afraid of these kinds of things and it’s not for everyone,” Kuhar said. “We’re not automatically tracking if people do yoga, but for running, it’s automatic.”
Data remains within the app unless a user decides to share it, he said.
Argus connects with data from the company’s $1.99 Fitness Buddy app, which provides a guide to more than 1,700 exercises. It allows users to track their body weight and metrics as well as graph their progress.
In Argus, users can also view their sleep cycles from the Azumio Sleep Time app.
Currently, Argus is a tool for consumers to track their health data on their own, but in the future, Azumio will add collaboration with professionals such as dietitians or fitness coaches, Kuhar said.
“Argus is not that medical-focused; it’s more consumer focused,” according to Kuhar.
“You can share data with doctors in some cases, but it’s not the main thing,” he said. “It’s basically about health and wellness and changing your lifestyle to help your life.”
Still, Argus will link to Azumio’s Glucose Buddy Pro app for diabetes in the future, Kuhar said. “We have separate servers for that,” he said. “We need time to merge it and combine it properly,” he said, noting some software integration issues the company is working to resolve.