Fitbit’s founders designed a wearable for the whole family

Long before 2007 when the health tracker Fitbit single-handedly mushroomed the market for wearable technology, another wearable device had been dominating the niche for nearly 20 years. Life Alert, an emergency medical alert device company, had created a remote control device worn as a pendant that could connect people to emergency services at the click of a button (never forget its iconic tagline: “I’ve fallen, and I can’t get up!”). The target users were older adults, and the target customers, subtly, were the family members worried about them. Now those two pioneering wearable devices have been spiritually melded into the Luffu Link, a health sensing and safety bracelet. It’s the first hardware product for Luffu, a health tracking system launched earlier this year by the cofounders of Fitbit, James Park and Eric Friedman. Designed as a centralized app for managing an entire family’s health, Luffu pulls in health data from medical providers, activity data from wearable monitors, schedules for medications and medical appointments, and self-logged details about everything from meals to emotions. Using artificial intelligence, Luffu learns patterns over time, and proactively offers…