Hands-on demo of the Basis Band for tracking your daily health (video)

Basis Science is a Silicon Valley company that wants to inspire you to be more healthy and make it easier to track your health.

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The company showed off its Basis B1 Band (pictured right) and its accompanying web application at the Consumer Electronics Show last week in Las Vegas. The device is one of many startups dedicated to the Quantified Self, which is all about understanding ourselves through data we’ve collected about ourselves. Rivals include Striiv, Jawbone, and FitBit.

Basis tracks your heart rate, your movement, skin temperature and the ambient temperature, and your galvanic skin response (GSR, or how much you’re sweating). The sweat tells you how strenuous your activity is and how stressed out you are. All of the data gets uploaded to the cloud and Basis analyzes it. You wear the device 24 hours a day. The device knows whether you are asleep or awake.

“The breakthrough is that we track heart rate continuously,” said Jeff Holove, chief executive of Basis Science. “Our view is that heart rate is a core indicator of your overall wellness.”

The GSR data can be used for a lie detector test, but that’s not why Basis measures it. It’s part of all of the metrics that it uses to figure out your basics.

The Basis device doubles as a wrist watch. But it also has little icons that tell you things about yourself. It tells you how many calories you’re burning, how much sleep you’re getting, and how many points you’ve gained as a result. Normally, you’d have to have a chest strap to get the same kind of information about your body.

When you log into the Basis web site, you can see your personal dashboard, including graphs that track your progress over time. All you have to do is wear the band 24 hours a day. The dashboard gives you intuitive information about your health and wellness in a snapshot. It measures your activity and the number of calories you burn in a day vs. how many you should be burning. The system can classify this data into meaningful events, like walking the dog, jogging, or sleeping.

“The dashboard gives a lot more information about your health than you normally have access to,” Holove said.

The Basis Band has multiple sensors around an optical engine that tracks heart rate by directing light into the skin to “see” your blood flow. Additional sensors gather information such as your movement.

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Basis raised $9 million from Norwest Venture Partners and Doll Capital Management. Prior to that, it was angel funded. Price is to be announced.

Check out the video below.