Deepinder Goyal's ₹85,000 wearable device, Temple, is facing questions from doctors over its scientific credibility. While the former Eternal CEO maintains that the product is a fitness and AI device rather than a medical device, doctors argue that its claims about measuring blood flow to the brain have not been adequately established. The controversy has also drawn attention to the product's changing positioning and Goyal's combative responses to criticism.

Temple began as an experiment to measure blood flow to the brain and understand ageing. It was subsequently associated with a new biomarker called entropy, before being positioned as a fitness tracker. Goyal has more recently described it as an AI-powered personal companion that uses vibrations to capture the wearer's speech, calling it "humanity's last personal device".

Pre-orders opened on November 1, but questions remain about what the device actually measures, how reliable its readings are and what evidence supports its claims.

In an interview with CNBC-TV18, Harish Bijoor, Founder of Harish Bijoor Consults; Dr Sanjeev Bagai, Padma Shri awardee and Chairman of Nephron Clinics; and Prakash Dadlani, Co-Founder of Topsail Appliances, discussed the scientific, business and communication challenges facing Temple.

The central scientific question is whether Temple's sensor can measure cerebral blood flow or, more specifically, the blood supply within the brain.

Dr Bagai argues that a sensor placed on the temporal region of the skin can measure the superficial temporal artery, but this is not the same as measuring blood flow within the brain. The arterial and venous blood supply of the brain lies much deeper and is considerably more complex.

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