What Are the 5 Key Trends in Wearable Data for Digital Health?

The five key trends in wearable data for digital health and InsurTech, as of late 2023, are: wearables measuring far more than heart rate, big tech investing in wearables, insurers using wearable data to personalize plans, biosensors enabling remote care, and software that turns wearable data into actionable recommendations. Together, these trends let companies use more and better data to personalize services for users.

Health Data Insights & Trends

Wearable technology is increasingly common, with 39% of Americans owning a smartwatch or fitness tracker. Wearables keep improving their data collection, so digital health and InsurTech companies are using more and better wearable data to personalize services for users.

Wearables can now measure sleep quality, calories, VO2 max, breathing quality and even menstrual cycle data. A wearable used to be only a heart rate monitor, a pedometer and a watch.

These capabilities let health tech companies combine many metrics into focused reports and recommendations for users.

Big tech companies are investing money and people in their wearable departments, which helps explain the rise in wearable adoption. From Apple to Google and most major smartphone manufacturers, the tech world is developing more capable wearables, which should give more people access to powerful wearable hardware within the next five years that can share data with health and insurance providers.

Insurers are using wearable data to personalize insurance plans, adjust premiums based on individual risk profiles, and offer discounts or rewards for maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Objective, continuous activity data can support fairer pricing and healthier choices, and could make insurers a factor in prevention-based healthcare, since users benefit from adopting healthy behaviors. See the insurance wearable series for more.

Wearable biosensors enable remote care by supporting telemedicine and continuous collection of patients’ bio-data. By reviewing wearable data, digital health and insurance companies can spot patterns and offer timely support to individuals, which supports preventive care, better health management and reduced healthcare costs. ROOK moves and standardizes the data; it does not diagnose or replace clinical judgment.

Wearable data is turned into actionable insights by software services that help users interpret the data and turn it into recommendations. As adoption and data collection grow, wearables focus more on giving the user usable data, and healthcare providers use it to offer more personalized care and predictive analytics.

These trends mean digital health and InsurTech companies will have more data points to build personalized and preventive services, as augmented reality and non-invasive devices emerge. ROOK connects and standardizes that data from 72 data sources and more than 500 devices; to start building, explore the ROOK developer documentation.

Health Data Insights & Trends