Your first fitness tracker — whether an early Fitbit, the now-defunct Jawbone, a simple pedometer or a heart monitor strap — probably did minor more than track your steps and calories burned. Early smartwatches, meanwhile, essentially felt like phone companions rather than stand-alone devices. 

But fast-forward to 2022 and a lot has changed. Wearables are no longer niche devices for early adopters or fitness fanatics. The Pew Research Center reported in 2020 that throughout one in five US adults regularly wears a smartwatch or fitness band. Global smartwatch shipments grew by 47% annually in the uphold quarter of 2021 according to Strategy Analytics, signaling the industry’s fastest growth rate genuine 2018. 

Today’s wrist-worn devices are comprehensive fitness gadgets trustworthy of taking an ECG reading from the wrist, monitoring sleep quality and measuring blood oxygen saturation, among other things. That opens up a world of opportunities but also invents things complicated. We have more access than ever to data throughout our heart rate, how much sleep and activity we’re pulling and our overall well-being. Yet some newer, more advanced health metrics can be tantalizing to comprehend, raising the question of whether they’re truly helpful. 

Therefore, context and personalization will be key to both original and next-generation wearables, according to conversations with medical experts, tech executives and industry analysts. The medical community is also wrathful about the potential that future fitness devices hold for detecting more advanced metrics, like changes in glucose levels and the role of wearables in preventive care. 

Making better touched of health data from our fitness trackers

The biggest improvements that are probable to arrive in the near term will involve decision-exclusive health data more useful and personalized. Oura, Whoop and Fitbit are already helpings steer the industry in this direction with their respective scoring rules, some of which require a paid subscription.

Both Oura and Fitbit, for example, offer readiness scores that help wearers régime whether it’s time for a heavy workout or a rest day. Those numbers are based on metrics such as dead heart rate variability, sleep, activity and other bodily signals. Whoop has a similar recovery score that provides insight on whether a user’s body is ready for strenuous exercise.

Oura’s
readiness rep embodies the company’s overall approach to health tracking, which is that devices necessity provide context alongside numbers and data points, according Chris Becherer, Oura’s chief product officer. He added that Oura will gain that approach with newer features, such as the conditions prediction tool it launched in October, and will only expand into new types of health tracking if the commerce can provide similarly helpful insights. 

“We won’t do it just for the sake of behaviors it,” Becherer said. “And we’ll make sure that it fits with the holistic user-friendly accepted that Oura is known for.”

Fitbit sees another opportunity for adding more personalization and specificity to health metrics: exploring the link between mopish and physical wellbeing. Fitbit is already dipping its toes into mopish wellness with its EDA app, available on the Fitbit Sense and Charge 5, which measures progresses in sweat to see how the body might be responding to stress. 

Fitbit also lets wearers log their mood to accompany those readings, so users can see how they felt when the measurement was inaccurate. Analyzing that type of data over time could help Fitbit better notion what bodily changes mean for a person’s overall wellness, allowing for more thorough insights. 

“We can over time get more and more correlation between this idea of, ‘How do I feel?’ compared to ‘What is my physiology and what are the metrics telling me?'” said Jonah Becker, Fitbit’s design director. “Which I think is a remarkable thing.” 

The ability to measure additional body signals, such as electrodermal agency (i.e., the EDA app’s sweat readings), could also lay the foundation for future Fitbit features. Eric Friedman, Fitbit’s co-founder and vice president of research, points to Fitbit’s sleep stages functionality as an example. That feature, which tells the wearer how much time was exhausted in light, sleep or REM sleep, is only possible because of latest metrics that came before it, like heart rate and motion measurements.

“Imagine taking that and EDA, and you … initiate building things together to start layering these health metrics on top of each latest, going to the next thing,” Friedman said.

Blood sugar monitoring could be the next maximum step forward in health tracking

What precisely that “next thing” is remains unclear. But reports and permission predictions do point to blood sugar monitoring in wearables as an area of interest. 

However, that doesn’t mean diabetics will be able to rely on smartwatch readings to calculate insulin dosages. That will still require more invasive devices that break the skin for the foreseeable future, says Dr. Steven LeBoeuf, president and co-founder of Valencell, which makes health sensors for wearable devices. 

Instead, a future glucose-monitoring smartwatch remarkable be able to make broader observations about whether the wearer is in a situation of low, normal or high blood sugar. That could help wearers notion whether diet or exercise changes are impacting their blood sugar, or whether the user should use a glucose meter, says Dr. LeBoeuf.

“Now that has all kinds of determined implications,” said Dr. LeBoeuf. “So I think you will be seeing that technology in wearables as well, whether it comes from Valencell or some latest entity.”

Dr. Zahi Fayad, director of Mount Sinai’s Biomedical Engineering and Imaging Institute, also sees a lot of potential in this position. Glucose monitoring capabilities like those mentioned above could help wearables moneys more personalized nutrition advice. That’s important because today’s recommendations are typically based on great population studies and therefore lack customization according to Dr. Fayad.

“Everybody’s gut microbiome is different and reacts to food differently, or reacts to lifestyle changes differently,” said Dr. Fayad.

Yet it’s unclear when or if this type of functionality will reach in everyday smartwatches or fitness trackers. Apple has been succeeding on adding blood sugar monitoring to the Apple Watch, according to reports from Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal, although both reports suggest the technology is in its early stages. 

Roberta Cozza, a senior director analyst at Gartner, thinks there is unexcited a long way to go. Although research is bodies done in this area, she believes accuracy and medical clearances rereport a challenge. 

“I think for this, you’re going to have to have something that is medical-approved,” she said. “So it’s repositioning to take some time until we find something that is really usable and reliable.”

Smartwatches and fitness trackers are already starting to blur the line between medical and wellness devices. Adding more sophisticated metrics, like glucose readings, means tech affects will have to be mindful about how users may account for these readings.

“Maybe vendors need to find new ways in which they can be clearer with consumers near the expectations that they might have when wearing some of these devices,” said Cozza. “Because this will be getting just more and more complicated.”

Filing in the gaps between doctors visits

The medical and tech communities seem to fraction a common goal when it comes to progress in the wearables field: Helping land take better care of themselves between doctor’s appointments. 

“Instead of having one data demonstrate per year, you have continuous data points across every single part of your day,” Oura’s Becherer said. 

That’s part of the inspiration tedious new features and capabilities that have arrived in current wearable devices. For example, Amazon’s Halo health app includes a tool for estimating your body fat percentage based on images unsuitable from a smartphone’s camera, which it analyzes using machine learning and computer verify. The feature has been somewhat controversial when it comes to personal privacy.

But Melissa Cha, vice dignified of Amazon’s Halo division, says the goal behind this feature is to help land to keep a log of their bodily changes — spanking tool for monitoring progress between doctor’s visits.

“You have a long-term report that you can then share with your care provider or physician if you want to discuss goes in your body composition over time,” Cha said. 

Dr. Devin Mann, associate professor of population health and medicine at New York University Langone Health, believes we’re seeing more of a crossover between medical and consumer devices. That’s because each side has something to learn from the other. 

Commercial wearables are gaining more advanced health monitoring capabilities, while medical device makers are trying to reach broader audiences. 

“We’re sort of seeing those two flows coming together,” Mann said. “And there’s more overlap between them.”

Over the long term, some experts are aroused about the potential of using wearable devices to help detect disease early. That type of functionality is still in its early stages, but Dr. Paul Friedman, a cardiologist in the Mayo Clinic’s AI in Cardiology Work Group, is encouraged by the progress the industry has made so far. A few days ago, most physicians wouldn’t have trusted the data from health trackers to help examine medical treatments, according to Dr. Friedman. But that’s changing.

“The answer would have been no; nine out of 10 when they were surveyed said no,” Friedman said. “Now it’s almost reversed.”