Mastering Your Body's KPIs: The Health Wearables Market (Part 1)
Are you obsessed with monitoring your body battery on your Garmin or Whoop? Because I certainly am.
Checking my body battery has become a morning ritual for me. Intrigued by the advancements in this industry of Health Wearables, I decided to delve deeper and was blown away by the sheer amount of innovation and capital being invested.
Reading health and fitness metrics allows us to understand what is happening inside our bodies and magic happens when reading is turned into action.
The Opportunity (s):
According to a16z, venture backed successes exist in spaces where people do not expect insurance coverage, and therefore have high consumer willingness-to-pay.
There is significant opportunity in further extending beyond traditional healthcare, which tends to be reactive, into the more proactive areas of consumer health like biohacking and longevity. Not only are people taking control of their health in light of Covid, consumers are oftentimes easier to influence than doctors, more willing to try groundbreaking medical technologies that could improve health but are still being proven out.
Wearable technology holds great promise for various applications, such as remote patient monitoring, hospital-at-home care, and virtual clinical trials. The market for wearables is projected to reach a staggering $265 billion by 2026, with an annual growth rate of 18%.
Although the D2C wearables market is stable, there is still work to be done to connect individuals with wearables that can effectively improve disease management and monitor the progression of diseases. To achieve this, key partners such as healthcare providers, employers, payers, and clinical trial sponsors need to play a crucial role in making wearables accessible to those who can benefit from them in managing their medical conditions. In recent times, wearable device manufacturers have taken steps to establish relationships with providers, payers, and trial sponsors to demonstrate the value of wearables in clinical settings. Notable examples include WHOOP identifying a digital biomarker for screening premature births, Oura partnering with Natural Cycles for digital birth control solutions, and Apple obtaining FDA clearance for monitoring Parkinson's symptoms.
Overcoming the Challenges
However, there are still challenges to be addressed in order to fully integrate wearables into clinical practices. These challenges include:
a. Finding reimbursement pathways,
b. Overcoming integration issues with electronic health records (EHRs),
c. Addressing the overwhelming amount of data that healthcare providers have to deal with.
By meaningfully addressing these barriers, wearables can truly catalyze their integration into clinical settings.
Now let's take a look at the top trends and featured startups in each health wearables category!
Group 1 - Enhanced Health Monitoring: Next-Generation Health Wearables come equipped with advanced sensors and algorithms that deliver more precise and comprehensive health monitoring. These wearables can track various biometric data points such as heart rate, blood pressure, blood oxygen levels, sleep patterns, stress levels, and more.
Some of the main players in this category are: Apple Watch, Garmin, WHOOP and Fitbit; but smart rings are on the rise:
Oura Ring: one of the first in this category, it has raised capital at a $2.55 billion valuation and more than 1 million Oura rings sold.
Movano Ring: it’s a medical-grade device (technology that qualifies for FDA clearance) that can monitor chronic disease while being “stylish enough for everyday wear.”
Circular Ring: French fitness tech company developing a ring, marketed towards a female audience and capable of tracking heart rate, sleep, and energy levels.
Group 2 - Continuous Glucose Monitoring (CGM): CGM wearables have gained significant popularity, particularly among individuals with diabetes. These devices offer real-time monitoring of glucose levels, eliminating the need for frequent fingerstick tests and enabling better management of blood sugar levels.
The upcoming generation of wearables in this category is focusing on Glucose/Metabolism: understanding how food impacts health and effectively managing glucose levels to optimize sustained energy when needed.
I find the following startups in this category especially interesting:
Levels: enables people to see how various food and exercise affects their blood glucose levels, actively suggesting tips for stabilization. The company has received $57M in investment, with Andreessen Horowitz among the main investors.
Supersapiens: The Supersapiens ecosystem, empowers athletes to optimize fueling, maximize training time, and can help increase performance gains. Its data interpretation tools represent the future of fueling and sports performance. The company has received $13.5M in investment from MICA Ventures AG, founder of Zwift, and Wahoo.
Group 3 - Smart Fabrics and Biometric Clothing: Health Wearables are incorporating smart fabrics and biometric clothing. These innovative wearables integrate sensors directly into garments, allowing for seamless and continuous health monitoring without the requirement of separate devices.
The companies that I find most interesting in this category are:
Prevayl: it has created an ecosystem of patent-protected wearable technology which transforms biodata into actionable insights that improve health, wellness, safety and performance. The company has secured £7.5M to expand its smart sportswear offerings.
Clim8: Products incorporating clim8® technology detect and react to the human body in real time, providing a thermal response adapted to the body needs. Clim8 has raised a total of $8.9M in funding over 3 rounds.
WHOOP announced WHOOP Body, its smart clothing line featuring Any-Wear sensor technology
Group 4 - Stress and Mental Health Trackers: These wearables prioritize the monitoring and management of stress levels, mental well-being, and emotional states. They employ sensors to measure heart rate variability, skin conductance, and other indicators of stress or relaxation.
Let's go deeper into this category:
Meditation tracking is possible by using technology to track the brain and body during meditation. Muse is a smart headband that acts as your personal meditation coach. Its advanced sensors can detect when your mind wanders and give you gentle audio cues to bring your focus back to the present. Melomind offers electrode-equipped headphones to get instant feedback on your brain activity and personalised coaching.
Stress and sleep. Neurotech and wearables are being used to eliminate stress and enhance sleep. Frenz is a brainband to help you sleep better. Modius stimulates neurons in the brain to induce sleep. Cove’s vibrating headband stimulates the brain to alleviate stress; and Emvio measures stress to help users manage their emotions.
Group 5: Elderly Care Wearables: Wearables designed for elderly care include devices like fall detection sensors, GPS trackers, and remote monitoring systems to ensure the safety and well-being of seniors.
Current health offers an enterprise care-at-home platform to enable healthcare organizations to deliver high-quality, patient-centric care at a lower cost. Best Buy spent nearly $400 million to acquire the company in 2021. Vitalconnect has a technology that is routinely used for cardiac monitoring as well as patient monitoring in the hospital and at home. Silvertree is developing a wellness wearable platform that provides the right balance of safety, connection, and style for active older adults.
According to Deloitte, there is a projected high demand for wearable wellness technology in 2024, with an estimated global shipment of 440 million consumer health and wearable wellness devices.
The increasing availability of new products and the growing acceptance of these devices by healthcare providers are believed to be the main factors fueling this growth.
In my next post (part 2), I delve into the investment landscape; mergers and acquisitions and what the future of health wearables looks like, even for the big boys: Apple, Google and Samsung.
Like I mentioned before, I'm pretty obsessed with certain health metrics, particularly stress levels associated with alcohol consumption before sleep, the quality and duration of my sleep, and my energy levels (body battery). The cool thing is that being so into these things helps me plan my meals, workout sessions, and chill-out moments more effectively.
+ endurance is good,
Martin
P.S. I used some of the following sources to obtain the data for this article:
(1) RockHealth, (2) a16z: bio-health, (3) Deloitte , (4) Fitt Insider
Great article. Looking forward to more!