Google's consolidating its health records and Search talent teams into its Fitbit business—this could signal its intent to pair Fitbit with personal health records, giving it enough ammo to catch up to Apple.

Apple is reportedly adding its most advanced sensors ever to its Series 7 Watch (temperature, glucose sensors)—here’s how its leadership in the wearables space could help prop up its healthcare play.

Amazon Halo launched a new feature that uses AI to track movement and build a personalized fitness plan—here’s how Big Tech can use wearables to capitalize on the growing remote patient monitoring market.

In 2021, expect to see a convergence of content and commerce, led by the likes of Peloton, Lululemon, Nike and Apple. Amazon and Google are also getting into the act as well with Halo and Fitbit, and emerging services offerings.

Working with SDOH-focused startups that integrate wearables into their platform could be enticing to health plans as more of their member bases turn to wearables. We estimate that the portion of US smart wearable users is projected to increase, with an estimated 73 million consumers using these devices by 2022.

While this wider healthcare pivot stalled, Apple focused its efforts into making its health tracking apps and Apple Watch wearable better. What this means: The report reveals how difficult disrupting healthcare is even for the biggest technology companies.

The new center will design and test how well digital sensors fit with different clinical trial designs to demonstrate both analytical and clinical validation for using wearables and biometric sensors in decentralized (remote) clinical trials.

One area that will benefit from 5G’s low latency is wearables, such as smart glasses, hearables, and more capable smartwatches. VR headsets and smart glasses are device categories that have a lot of near-term potential with 5G.

Apple is opening itself up to more remote patient monitoring (RPM) opportunities as the RPM market blossoms and more consumers purchase smartwatches: 21% of US adults already use a smartwatch—and we expect there to be more than 30 million RPM users by 2024, up from 23.4 million in 2020.

They recognize the opportunity for their existing consumer footprint in the smartphones (iPhones and Androids) and wearables (Apple Watch and Fitbit) market to help inform patient health profiles, especially as healthcare becomes more digitized. However, privacy concerns persist as a constant struggle.

It’s also made other significant moves in the wearables, home health, and healthcare voice assistant spaces.

We’ve seen a multitude of wearables developers take part in clinical trials over the past year:.

This includes leveraging wearable tech, video visits, secure messaging, data-powered care management, and in-person care to help providers better identify and meet the specific care needs of a patient: For example, opening up telemedicine visits as an additional channel of care delivery can bolster patient-provider communication, and additional data insights from wearables can help providers optimize clinical

For example, Biobeat supplies Amwell patients with a wearable wrist-monitor or chest-monitor, which can let providers continuously monitor vital signs like blood pressure during and after a telehealth encounter. Creating a platform capable of hosting third-party applications means Amwell can integrate future RPM partners’ tech into its telehealth services more quickly.

So, developers will have to assure patients that their data is protected if they want to see higher consumer adoption of their particular app or wearable.

For instance, key patient wearables, including smartwatches from Apple, Samsung, and Fitbit don’t yet have 5G capability, a barrier that home-health devices like connected scales, thermometers, toothbrushes, and heart rate monitors also face.