By Eliana Mischel, NoCamels -
We all have had the experience of taking a water bottle to work, school or the gym and coming home with it still almost full.
We all also know that water is crucial for maintaining our health but too many of us simply don’t imbibe enough of it. But Tel Aviv-based smart packaging company impacX says it has a solution for everyone.
It has developed a smart cap that measures how much liquid the attached reusable bottle still contains and reminds you to drink by vibrating, lighting up in a variety of colors or sending a message to your phone.
“The purpose is to bring better health and wellness to people using clever technology,” Yoav Hoshen, senior VP of sales and development at impacX, tells NoCamels.
Patented technologies in the form of sensors, a mobile app, brand dashboard, cloud servers and algorithms are all snugly encased into the seemingly commonplace bottle cap.
“What we’ve developed in impacX is a kind of smart packaging platform that comprises three elements,” says Hoshen.
“One is the technology embedded into the cap that can track the water on liquid level within a bottle. We are doing that by sending a laser beam inside the bottle and measuring the time that it takes for that laser to reach the cap.
“The second part is that this smart cap is actually connected to a consumer-facing app that helps personalize all your hydration. So the first time you go through some onboarding process, where you’re asked about things like your weight, your age, the opportunity to connect it to sport tracking devices and your Apple Watch, or to any third party app, such as Apple Health or Google Fit,” he says.
“Not only that, it builds your personalized hydration goal for that specific profile, but it also can take into account the impact of the amount of activity you have been doing throughout the day, and even the weather in your location – all from the sensor on the water bottle.”
The user’s personalized hydration plan is calculated based on individual needs, health and lifestyle.
“If you have specific target, let’s say you are pregnant, or you practice some sport activity or you want to meet some other goals, there are specific modules in the app that you can say, ‘I’m pregnant, I’m in my third month’ or ‘I’m now about to run,’ or you can even connect it automatically to your sports tracker,” Hoshen explains.
“The technology behind it is very complicated, but your user experience and your consumer journey is pretty simple. You simply get lights and vibration reminders on the bottle.”
The bottle displays a red light when the platform identifies that the user needs to have drunk more water by a certain time and a green light when the user is on the correct hydration track.
Proper hydration has shown to have numerous benefits including improving alertness, reducing obesity, aiding in digestion, improving energy levels and overall better wellbeing, and slowing down aging.
Still, an alarming 47 percent of Americans don’t drink enough water, according to January 2023 polling by the CivicScience research institute. The impacX team also says its own case studies show that people do indeed need reminders to drink properly and that prompts from its smart bottle can change behaviors – and not just when it comes to your H2O intake.
“If you want to lose weight or you want to improve your sport practice, there are specific plans in the app that are being enhanced constantly to help you,” says Hoshen.
There’s also an option for owners to interact with others and share their progress, which Hoshen argues “provides a great sense of community.”
impacX’s product is available for international corporations and Israeli individuals. It has so far teamed up with Bayer AG pharmaceutical company, international food giant Danone, Font Vella natural mineral company and, most recently, sports beverage producer Gatorade, which incorporates the Israeli startup’s unique tech to manage athletes’ water consumption habits.
“It’s powered by our hardware and software engines inside the cap, inside their app and inside the cloud service behind it,” Hoshen says of the agreement with Gatorade.
“We have been searching for an innovative technology company to partner with that can deliver personalized daily hydration recommendations and change the way athletes hydrate and fuel,” said Drew Palin, Gatorade’s senior director of marketing and lead on innovation.
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impacX has launched the smart bottle in Israel “as a full country pilot,” according to Hoshen, with plans to expand into further territories as well. So far, the response has been good.
“We get enormously positive results from all kinds of people: young and old; people who do sports or not; pregnant women; people who have medical problems – and apparently most of them are not drinking enough water,” he says.
“We are here to actually help you avoid that situation and help you meet your daily hydration goals.”
