The merging worlds of diagnostics, health tech and wellness
Diagnostics and wellbeing metrics are merging and wellbeing data is taking more of our time. I love health tech and pay a lot of attention to my health. It’s been exciting to have the opportunity to measure heart rates, track training locations and progress. In 2024 I even tried out a Whoop wristband for 24-hour monitoring.
It’s a fast-evolving market. Wellbeing metrics are entering a new phase, merging more closely with health diagnostics. Monitoring our health presents several options and the data has more of us enthralled. Health insurance companies, like Bupa, are drawing us in with wearable tech-based offers.
Setting boundaries
I’ve tried to set some wellbeing tech boundaries too. Not only is it expensive there is also some reluctance to know too much and spend too much time ‘knowing more but doing less’. Do I really need tech to tell me to move, how well I’ve slept, to eat a more varied diet?
The Whoop wrist band introduced me to the concept of Heart Rate Variability (HRV) which measures the gap between heart beats. A higher reading indicates better fitness and Whoop was at pains to tell me that it can vary between people and might not be of benefit comparing. So of course I compared with friends.
I did a small experiment to check the performance of the Whoop as a heart rate monitor, involving wearing my Garmin heart rate chest band and the Whoop. It turned out that the Whoop showed my heart rate being 20% higher than the Garmin when doing the same activity. The chest band is more stable and even when quite tight the wrist band moves, so this might explain it. It made me doubt the data more though. Especially as wellbeing devices fall out of the strict definition for medical devices as they are not intended to diagnose or treat disease.
Whoop takes readings in the night to monitor sleep and this is when I fell out with it. Sometimes I’d wake up feeling great and it would tell me ‘Rubbish sleep’ which it does by comparing time spent in REM, deep, light and awake. It made me doubt a good sleep. Sometimes it was the other way around, with loads of the right REM and deep sleep regenerating me and I’m waking up feeling rough. I should feel great, why not!
Some of the benefits
Although it can precipitate Doom-health (D-health) scrolling, there can be benefits with well-being tech. It can help make us aware of things and we can then address them. For example, not over-doing it and taking the time needed to recover from training to reap the improvements. It can enable healthy connections, for example on Strava, which must be the most positive and encouraging social media experience. On the other hand, it can result in more comparisons being made on performance, going down ‘rabbit holes’ and perhaps taking less satisfaction and joy from the process, being outdoors in nature, being alive and free!
Adoption and change
At Genesis 2018, there was a buzz around wearable devices and the remote sensing of treatment, lifestyle and outcomes. At a similar time, a friend of my son’s was using remote glucose monitoring to help him manage his type 1 diabetes. Since then, glucose monitoring has moved towards the early majority of the technology adoption life cycle, thanks to companies like Zoe, introducing the health benefits of how blood sugar levels respond to different foods which may then influence individual changes to diet and lifestyle.
What next?
What about the next five years? How will these innovations keep up with regulations and vice versa?
Wellness Apps may become more entrenched, our self-health knowledge will continue to increase, less invasive methods may be used more in clinical settings (like breath biopsy, AI integration with wearable device data being linked to other vital signs).
The doom-scrolling halo extends to health obsession, and we will need to set boundaries with wearable device data too, trusting ourselves and how we feel. I try to hold on to the basics. Many years ago my Nana told me “the hours of sleep before midnight matter the most, son”. Great advice, I still carry with me - no device necessary.
Author: Simon Walker, Founding Director, RLS. August 2025
#Diagnostics #Wellbeing #HealthTec #MedicalDevices
Release Life Sciences is business consultancy serving life sciences and diagnostics with a person-centred approach, supporting you to release growth, of one kind or another. We serve you first through providing coaching, interim resources , strategic support and training.
Further reading and inspiration for this article includes:
1) One great day on a page - a brief insight into Genesis 2018
2) Why did Alcaraz, Sinner & Sabalenka have to remove fitness
3) Get a WHOOP 5.0 band with health insurance
4) What is a continuous glucose monitor and how can it help you?
