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Industry trends, latest developments, and announcements

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What Do GLP-1s Do to Wearable Data? Heart Rate Rises, HRV Falls, and Some of the Changes Are Not What They Seem

On Wegovy, 26% of adults had a heart rate rise of 20 bpm or more at some visit. GLP-1s raise resting heart rate, lower HRV, improve sleep apnea, shrink lean mass and change the weight that calorie and VO2 max estimates depend on. Which of those changes are real, which are artifacts of how wearables calculate, and what a product should do when a user starts treatment.

Nov 4, 2026

Health Data

How Many Days Does a Wearable Need to Learn Your Baseline? Two to Four Weeks, and Longer Is Not Always Better

Apple asks for 7 nights, Oura up to two weeks and Garmin about three weeks before personal baselines switch on. We simulated what different baseline lengths do: short ones raise false alarms, long ones take weeks to accept a real change. The trade-off, why HRV needs longer than resting heart rate, and the rules that make baselines dependable.

Nov 3, 2026

Wearables

Average Steps per Day by Age, Sex and Country: Benchmarks for Health Apps and Programmes

Stanford's study of 717,527 phone users in 111 countries put the average at 4,961 steps a day. Its more useful finding was that the gap between a country's most and least active people predicted obesity better than its average. Steps by country, sex and age from the study's own data, and what it means for anyone setting step goals or benchmarks.

Nov 2, 2026

Developer Tools

How Do You Know Wearable Data Is Wrong? 12 Checks to Run Before You Score Anything

Every score, AI coach and programme report inherits the errors in the data underneath it. Most of those errors are mundane and detectable: impossible values, wrong units, the same steps counted twice, records that were replaced, days the device was not worn, and two metrics that share a name but not a formula. Twelve checks, with rules of thumb and what to do when one fails.

Nov 1, 2026

All Posts

120 articles

Three Governments Just Made Wearable Data a Regulated Input: CMS ACCESS, the NHS 10 Year Plan and the EU Health Data Space

ComplianceRegulation Sep 11, 2026

Which Day Does Last Night's Sleep Belong To? Sleep Date Rules on Fitbit, Oura, Garmin, WHOOP, HealthKit and Health Connect

SleepHealth Data Sep 6, 2026

Google Just Unified the Android Health Stack: What Google Health, the Gemini Coach, and FHIR Medical Records Mean for Developers

Health DataAndroid May 28, 2026

Wearables, Nearables, and Ambient: A Field Guide to Health-Tracking Devices in 2025 — and What Their Data Is Actually Worth

WearablesHealth Data Nov 20, 2025

Blog

Latest

What Do GLP-1s Do to Wearable Data? Heart Rate Rises, HRV Falls, and Some of the Changes Are Not What They Seem

How Many Days Does a Wearable Need to Learn Your Baseline? Two to Four Weeks, and Longer Is Not Always Better

Average Steps per Day by Age, Sex and Country: Benchmarks for Health Apps and Programmes

How Do You Know Wearable Data Is Wrong? 12 Checks to Run Before You Score Anything

All Posts

What Do GLP-1s Do to Wearable Data? Heart Rate Rises, HRV Falls, and Some of the Changes Are Not What They Seem

How Many Days Does a Wearable Need to Learn Your Baseline? Two to Four Weeks, and Longer Is Not Always Better

Average Steps per Day by Age, Sex and Country: Benchmarks for Health Apps and Programmes

How Do You Know Wearable Data Is Wrong? 12 Checks to Run Before You Score Anything

Is Sleep Consistency More Important Than Sleep Duration? In 61,000 People, Regularity Predicted Mortality Better

Do Fitness Trackers Actually Make People More Active? About 1,800 Steps a Day at First. The Design Decides What Lasts

How Accurate Are AI Health Coaches With Wearable Data? The Best Model Scored 73%. Most Scored Under 60%

Why Do Step Counts Drop in Winter? A Wellness Program That Works Can Still Look Like It Failed

How Much Data Does One Wearable User Generate? From 40 Values a Day to 17,280, and Storage Is the Cheap Part

Does Daylight Saving Time Affect Sleep? The Real Effect Is Minutes. The Error in Your Data Can Be an Hour

Garmin Reopened Its Developer API. The Free Tier Has No History, and Bigger Apps Will Pay Per User From April 2027

Can a Smart Scale Tell If You're Losing Muscle on a GLP-1? Its Error Hides Months of Change

Which Wearable Should You Trust When Two Disagree? Apple's Answer Now Changes Moment by Moment

Can Your Wearable Tell You're Getting Sick? It Can Spot the Change, but Most Alerts Will Be Wrong

Withings Now Charges New Users to Sync With Apple Health. Data Portability Just Became a Subscription Feature

GLP-1 Pills Make Weight-Loss Drugs a Consumer Purchase. Staying On Them Is Now the Hard Part

Health Apps Make Most of Their Money in the First Two Weeks. The Insight Has to Arrive Before the Trial Ends

Google Fit, Fitbit, Strava and Garmin Changed Their APIs Since 2024. Plan for the Next Health API Shutdown

Employers Face the Biggest Health Cost Rise Since 2003. Vendors Without Hard Outcomes Go First

How Accurate Is Smartwatch Blood Oxygen? Good Enough for Overnight Patterns, Not for a Single Reading

Google Adds Function Labs and Lingo Glucose to Google Health. Like Apple, It's Keeping the Interpretation

Neko Health Raised $700 Million. The $499 Scan Is the Front Door, Not the Business

Happy Ring's FDA Blood Pressure Clearance Covers Less Than the Headlines Said

Medicare Wants Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) Run by Practices, Not Vendors

Smartwatch Calories Are Off by 15 to 25%, Mostly Too High. Don't Let Users Eat Them Back

Smart Glasses Are Health's Next Interface, Not Its Next Sensor

Strava API Changes in 2026: Paid Access, 10 Athletes Without Review, No Intermediaries

Can a Wearable Track Perimenopause? What Oura, Apple and Sensors Measure, and What Hasn't Been Validated

How Heart Rate Zones Are Calculated on Apple Watch, Garmin, WHOOP and Fitbit, and Why Zone 2 Differs

Can Your Phone Predict a Fall? Walking Steadiness, Gait Speed and What iPhone Actually Measures

Google Health Guardian on Pixel Watch: Blood Pressure and Insulin Resistance Trends Without FDA Clearance

How Accurate Is VO2 Max on Apple Watch and Garmin? What the Validation Studies Show

Over-the-Counter CGMs: Dexcom Stelo, Abbott Lingo and the Glucose Data Market for People Without Diabetes

Can a Smartwatch Detect AFib? What the Apple, Fitbit and Samsung Evidence Actually Shows

Do Doctors Use Wearable Data? 97% Have Looked at It, 6% or Fewer Have It in Their Workflow

How Wearable Stress Scores Are Calculated: Garmin, WHOOP, Oura, Samsung and Fitbit Compared

Cuffless Blood Pressure Wearables: Apple Hypertension Notifications, Samsung, Hilo and What Is Cleared

Can a Smartwatch Detect Sleep Apnea? What Apple's and Samsung's FDA-Cleared Features Actually Measure

The Smart Ring Market in 2026: Oura, Samsung Galaxy Ring, Ultrahuman, RingConn and Garmin's Cirqa

Wearables and Adults Over 65: The Ownership Gap Medicare Programs Have to Close

How Many People Still Wear Their Wearable After Six Months? What a Decade of Abandonment Data Shows

Do Wearables Work on Darker Skin? What the Evidence Says About Heart Rate, SpO2 and Who Gets Tested

The 10,000 Steps Myth: What 57 Studies Say About Step Goals for Apps and Wellness Programs

Oura's IPO, Postponed: What a $15.6 Billion Smart Ring Valuation Says About the Health Data Business

Why Wearable Data Arrives Late: HealthKit, Health Connect and Cloud API Sync Delays Explained

Why Google Play Rejects Health Apps, Including Ones With No Health Features

What Garmin Data Syncs to Apple Health and Health Connect, and What Only Garmin's API Delivers

Why Apps Get Rejected After Adding HealthKit

Can a Web App Read Apple Health? HealthKit, PWAs, Capacitor and the Apple Health API Explained

Health Data Has Four Authorization Models, and a Cross-Platform App Is Usually Running Three

What It Actually Takes to Validate a Health Score

What Is a Good Sleep Score? Apple's 82 Is High, Garmin's 82 Is Good, and WHOOP Is Scoring Something Else

How Is a Readiness Score Calculated? Oura Uses Nine Inputs, Apple Uses Three, and None of Them Publish the Formula

Wellness Program KPIs: Participation Is Not Engagement, and Neither Is an Outcome. The Seven Numbers to Report Instead

Three Governments Just Made Wearable Data a Regulated Input: CMS ACCESS, the NHS 10 Year Plan and the EU Health Data Space

Apple Watch Series 12 Health Features: Readiness, Recovery HRV, Health Age, Quest Labs and What Changed in HealthKit

Health Insurance Is Copying Auto Telematics, and Health Has a Harder Problem Than Driving

The 2026 Wearable Market Is Splitting in Two, and the Health Data Is Going With the Premium Half

What Consumers Pay for Health Insight in 2026: The Price Map for Wearable Memberships, AI Coaches, Blood Panels and CGMs

Which Day Does Last Night's Sleep Belong To? Sleep Date Rules on Fitbit, Oura, Garmin, WHOOP, HealthKit and Health Connect

Why Your Resting Heart Rate Differs by Device: Apple Measures Awake, Garmin and Oura Measure Asleep

What Is a Good HRV? Population Studies Say About 40 ms, Fitness Apps Say About 80, and Both Are Right

Digital Health M&A in 2026: The Median Exit Takes 9.5 Years and a $7.7M Last Round

The Senate Rewrote HIPRA: AI Training Data Under HHS Rules, Consumer Disclosure Struck

Non-Invasive Glucose Monitoring: Zero Cleared Devices, So Apple and Google Infer Instead

Can a Watch Detect Insulin Resistance? Google's Own Study Says It Misses 40% of Cases

Is Your Health App a Medical Device? After the FDA's January Guidance, Your Marketing Page Decides

How Much Health Data Fits in an LLM Context Window? One Night of Heart Rate Costs 32,000 Tokens

Can You Feed Wearable Data to an AI? Strava Says No, Garmin Says Yes, WHOOP Says Nothing

The EU AI Act for Health Apps: The August 2026 Deadline Moved, but One Obligation Started Anyway

Google Fit's APIs Shut Down at the End of 2026: What Actually Replaces Them

Building a Health Data Pipeline: The Hard Parts Nobody Warns You About

Where Oura's 95% Sleep Accuracy Claim Actually Comes From