As we enter the age of wearable tech, fitness and health-related gadgets that can monitor heartbeat and track your workouts abound. Fitbit and Apple Watch are great for giving users a glimpse of their overall health, but despite physically touching it to get a reading, none of these wearables are monitoring your skin.

In beauty-obsessed South Korea, one startup hopes to fix that — all while capitalizing on both the burgeoning worldwide internet-of-things (IoT) movement and the booming domestic skincare sector. WAY has devised a portable gadget that can monitor a user’s skin condition and surroundings to give them an instant snapshot of their largest organ’s health and tips for how to improve it.

A trio of sensors

When we fall down or spend too much time in the sun, our skin bears the physical signs of damage. But on a day-to-day basis, our skin health isn’t always clear. Understanding our skin condition is further complicated by environmental factors like temperature and humidity. That’s why WAY uses three sensors: one to check the current UV index and another to gauge humidity, combined with a bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) sensor that can read moisture content and estimate oil levels within the skin tissue itself.

Getting a skincare reading with WAY is as simple as touching the device to your face and opening up the companion smartphone app, compatible with both Android and iOS. It connects via Bluetooth LE and has a battery life of one week. Recharging is done via a micro USB cable (in the land of Samsung and LG, something most Koreans certainly carry around).

WAY is powered by an ARM Cortex-M0 CPU. It’s similar in size and shape to a makeup compact, has a vibration motor and LED light for alerts, and is available in two color combinations: black and gold or white and silver.

Image: HelloWay

Dermatologist in your purse

The startup, based in Seoul’s swanky Gangnam district, hopes to position itself as a dermatologist in your purse — and it even has one as a co-founder.

“Skincare IoT was always a challenge that I wanted to respond to, and it’s meaningful for me to actually make it for real,” Dr. Gana Oh, WAY co-founder and CTO, tells Tech in Asia. “It’s a valuable challenge.”

Dr. Oh says there are two main healthcare-related benefits to be gained from using WAY daily:

First and foremost, users can work on their general skincare and anti-aging with WAY, based on accurate data. Secondly, I believe that WAY could even help prevent skin cancer. Sunlight is essential to vitamin D production, but too much can be harmful. WAY will give you recommendations on those environmental conditions, too, such as what SPF sunblock to use based on the UV index.

After getting a reading from the WAY device, the app displays a user’s estimated “skin age.” A graph displays either a good, normal, or bad rating for skin moisture, oiliness, pigment, wrinkles, and pore congestion. It even tracks a woman’s period and water intake to see how those changes affect her skin condition. It then gives personalized beauty tips based on the data it collects. For dry skin, it might notify a user to drink more water and apply extra moisturizer.

Image: Tech in Asia

Big data for beauty

As it learns more about a user’s unique environment and skin condition, WAY also makes product recommendations. In the beginning, they will be based on data collected from fellow users — i.e. this person lives in a similar environment and has had success with this brand of oil cleanser. Recommending partner brands would be a potentially huge revenue stream for the young startup, founded in December 2014, but WAY’s leader is thinking bigger.

“We will provide skincare product recommendations based on data,” says co-founder and CEO Jason Moon. “It won’t be used as a cosmetic brand’s marketing tool, but we are having conversations with diverse Korean and international cosmetics firms. We can’t share their names, but we’ll consider doing something with them if it helps promote women’s health.”

Moon, who ran a health- and beauty-related video service for three years before starting WAY, says that his goal for 2016 is to accumulate enough big data to develop skincare products in-house. Having a professional dermatologist on the team will certainly help WAY realize that goal.

“K-beauty is hot nowadays,” he adds. “I think a lot of women in the world trust Korean cosmetic brands and are interested in Korean women’s beauty tips and skincare routine. Our next mission is to introduce Korean skincare products that are customized to a user’s unique skin profile.”

Crowdfunding success

The WAY team wants to share its creation with women around the world, not only Koreans, so they chose to launch an Indiegogo campaign to gauge interest. WAY surpassed its $50,000 funding goal in just 72 hours. It’s currently sitting just above $67,000 with 16 days remaining.

Image: Indiegogo

You can get your own WAY at a discounted early bird price of $99 on Indiegogo, which the startup says will ship in November. Around the same time, WAY will also see a commercial release in Korea with an estimated retail price of $149. Moon hints that it will see a release in select European and Southeast Asian markets shortly thereafter, due to strong backing from those regions on Indiegogo.

“People usually make new plans on workout and skincare at the beginning of the year,” Moon explains. “[A November release] will give us two months to make WAY the new skincare trend in 2016.”

In addition to its crowdfunding campaign, WAY raised $500,000 in seed funding from Koisra Seed Partners, Albatross Investment, and SparkLabs Global Ventures last month.