The days of wearables collecting data and merely providing these insights back to users are numbered, with the inclusion of actionable insights set to become a critical differentiator in their future value proposition, a medtech CEO has forecast.
Speaking to Medical Device Network, David Benshoof Klein, CEO of digital therapeutics company Click Therapeutics, said: “Companies that leverage data collected by wearables to provide things of value to users are the ones that are going to rise to the top.”
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To retain a leading position in the burgeoning wearables market, Benshoof Klein’s view is that moving forward, there will be a growing expectation from users that their wearables provide “bona fide” help, such as recommendations related to taking care of their health and wellbeing, or chronic conditions.
According to a 2023 report from GlobalData, the wearable technology market is forecast to grow from $99.5bn in 2022 to $290.6bn in 2030.
Dexcom, the US leader in the continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) space, is one of the first major movers in terms of utilising data from a non-medical device wearable to take actionable steps regarding a user’s healthcare.
In November 2024, Dexcom invested $75m into ŌURA, thereby establishing a partnership that made Dexcom the only CGM compatible with the Finnish company’s Oura smart ring. With the partnership, Dexcom’s CGM data is integrated with Oura ring’s wellness metrics such as sleep, stress, and cardiovascular data. This combined data gives users insights into aspects such as how poor sleep affects glucose variability and what meals cause glucose spikes – thus empowering diabetics to take actionable steps to help better manage their diabetes.
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By GlobalDataIn a comparable move, in January 2026, Click partnered with Ultrahuman to develop the Migraine PowerPlug. The software-based feature, integrated with Ultrahuman’s platform, is based on Click Therapeutics’ US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-authorised prescription digital therapeutic that is designed to offer insights and guided activities for individuals that experience chronic migraine.
Benshoof Klein continued: “The rationale behind this partnership is to distil the data coming from a wearable to allow patients and users to better understand their migraine patterns.
“For instance, if a user can start to understand, on the basis of objective data, what gives them a higher percentage of getting a migraine, they could begin to understand and even action those patterns. I strongly believe that for wearables, this is the next frontier: to identify a problem, but to also help people manage that problem.”
While wearables hold the potential to improve the way users manage their health, security is a rising concern. Research from security firm Promon highlights that weak or absent encryption for data transmissions and limited security updates for wearable and internet of things (IoT) devices are among some of the factors that heighten the risk of data theft. Therefore, the onus is on manufacturers to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the data that is being gathered by wearable devices.
