Rings, watches, patches and sensors: what continuous health data can actually tell us, and where the wearable industry is heading next.
14 articles
The fitness industry spent three years running healthcare's experiment for it: hand millions of people wearables, AI and data, then watch what changes behaviour. The result is that the data became the commodity and the human who turns it into behaviour became the premium, exactly the high-touch role healthcare keeps trimming while it funds the high-tech half.
Whoop and Oura spent 2026 walking from wearable brand to health platform down mirror-image paths: Oura buying clinical-data integration, Whoop capitalising into Medicare reimbursement and running its own care. The device is now the marketing layer; the real moat is whoever owns the cleanest pipe between consumer wearables and clinical systems, and Europe is missing the reimbursement pathway both are exploiting in the US.
Three almost-simultaneous launches, Luffu by the Fitbit founders, Google's new Health app, and Oscar Health's Lucie marketplace, redraw healthcare's customer from the lone patient to the household. What shifts for patients, providers, payers and employers when the unit of analysis moves from one person to the family.
Healthcare has the most to gain from AI and the most to lose from sharing the data that feeds it. Google's TurboQuant algorithm and a wave of on-device wearables are breaking the privacy-vs-capability tradeoff, moving intelligence to the edge where patient data never has to leave the building.
The wearables industry just shifted from counting steps to predicting strokes. While most organisations debate digital transformation, tech giants are quietly building the infrastructure to turn your biological data into the next platform economy.
The same consumers who won't pay €18/month for digital therapeutics just spent €267 on an Oura ring. Meanwhile, traditional digital health funding has dropped 75% since 2021, while wellness companies secured €6.5 billion across 318 startups.There's a story hidden in these numbers about why some healthcare innovations thrive while others struggle to survive.
A visit to FIBO and the explosive rise of Hyrox reveal a fitness and wellness boom accelerating faster than the forecasts. But as younger generations turn wellness into an obsession, could the relentless pursuit of optimal health tip into anxiety rather than wellbeing?
What if hitting 60 felt like being 25 again? 💪 Explore how modern life is rewriting the rules of age and vitality.
Belgium's ultra-endurance champions are making headlines globally. Could the country's fertile tech ecosystem be a contributing factor? An exploration of Belgium's growing sportstech landscape.
Smart rings are small devices with big potential: they are redefining wearables and opening up new possibilities for health monitoring beyond the wrist.
Discover how fitness can be more than just a personal goal: it's a powerful way to strengthen social connections. Explore innovative ideas for fostering community through movement.
I've been collecting a lot of health data via wearables but realised I had so much data that I couldn't make sense of it. Enter the PLLM — a Personal Large Language Model for health coaching, evolving into a multi-agent system.
Imagine a device, perhaps a sleek clip-on, a smart patch, a pair of glasses, or an advanced smartphone, that continuously measures vitals, offers round-the-clock availability, and provides empathetic guidance.
As an avid trail runner with a passion for innovation, I have experimented extensively with various wearables, patches, and screenings, diligently recording the outcomes alongside my personal diaries.
