The health monitoring boom only gets weirder from here (2025)

Adrienne So

| Gear | January 8

Forget going to the doctor’s office; these companies are putting the power of tracking every aspect of your health into our own hands. But do you really want to know?

The health monitoring boom only gets weirder from here (1)

Photograph: Tristan deBrauwere

I have neverbeen afraid of a commercially available health tracker before the Abbott Lingo.

If you have diabetes or know someone who does, the small, wearable biosensor will probably look pretty familiar. You slap it on your arm and a small filament slides directly under your skin to convey data on your blood glucose levels to the sensor, connecting to your phone via Bluetooth so you can easily monitor them. If you’re diabetic, keeping your blood sugar levels stable means avoiding long-term health problems down the road. If you’re not, it means you can maximize your athletic performance … or just prevent that 3pm brain fog.

The Lingo has been out for several months, but I have been delaying testing it. Besides the major squick factor, I’m not sure what I’d do with the data. I know I would benefit from eating more fiber, more wholegrains, and lean proteins. It’s just … well, I’m a working mom of two, and I don’t have a personal chef making me chicken breasts at home.

I’ve measured my body fat composition with electric currents and taken pictures of my unclothed self for AI analysis before now. But the latest round of health monitoring tests go much deeper, and at CES 2025, I’ve been able to take a closer look at a few of them.

Spit Take

I do feel especially bad for chickening out on continuous glucose monitoring, because Lingo isn’t even the first commercially available blood glucose monitor at the moment. Technically, the first to launch was the Stelo last year, from diabetes equipment manufacturer Dexcom.

Dexcom also has an Apple Watch app and recently announced a new partnership with thesmart ring manufacturer Oura, which would add blood sugar monitoring to the list of already extensive biometrics that you can check on the Oura app. (It’s worth noting here that Dexcom also invested $75 million in Oura’s Series D funding.) Dexcom’s most recent innovation has been to launcha proprietary GenAI platform to offer its users weekly insights, with personalized tips regarding diet, exercise, and sleep. (Stop eating cake! Start walking around!)

The health monitoring boom only gets weirder from here (3)

The Dexcom Stelo was the first commercially available blood glucose monitor. Photograph: Tristan deBrauwere

What other metrics is yourFitbit or Garmin missing? How about arterial health? Enter theConneqt Pulse, a new arterial health monitor designed for personal use. It looks like a blood pressure cuff and measures multiple factors that are related to cardiac health, like brachial blood pressure or augmentation pressure—a measure of arterial stiffness that’s associated with increased cardiovascular morbidity.

I asked Catherine Liao, Conneqt’s chief strategy officer, if people who werenot cardiologists would be able to interpret and act upon the data collected by the Conneqt Pulse. She acknowledged that education would be an important part of getting customers to use it, but once educated, quantified selfers would be able to use this data as part of maintaining heart health as they age.

Maybe you would like to monitor your hormones. TheEli Health Hormometerlets you monitor cortisol and progesterone levels with simple saliva tests. Unwrap a stick, let the absorbent tip soak in your mouth for up to one minute, then use the camera on your phone to scan the test strip. The Eli Health app gives you results that you used to only be able to obtain in a doctor’s office.

Similarly, Vivoo, which makes simple strip tests (we wrote about the company’sUTI at-home diagnosticlast year) launched a suite of women’s health tests this year, with everything from the standard ovulation and pregnancy tests, to an in-home fertility test . This checks for the presence of follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) and also runs a vaginal pH test to see if your vagina is perhaps an inhospitable home for sperm.

Or maybe you’d just like to measure itall. Withings’ Omnia is a concept product not for sale in the consumer market just yet (there are only two, currently) but we saw it at Unveiled this year. You simply step onto the platform and every single measurement that any Withings equipment has made shows up on an attractive mirrored interface. A voice AI assistant then helps you come up with actionable plans surrounding your health.

Withings also used CES to launch Cardio Checkup, an in-app service that’s available now and is compatible with every Withings device that has ECG capabilities, like theScanWatch. In addition to alerting you to possible cases of atrial fibrillation, it will, true to its name, check up on you quarterly and give you access to specialists through the app.

Get Better

The health monitoring boom only gets weirder from here (4)

Getting the Abbott Lingo biosensor inserted into your skin takes a matter of seconds. Photograph: Tristan deBrauwere

And that’s not all—I’ve got several more days of meetings to go. It’s a strange time to see CES peppered with so much home medtech. The coronavirus pandemic spurred a surge in digital health innovations, but 2024 has beena reckoning—CNBC analyzed 39 digital health public companies and noted that two-thirds of them were down for the year, or even out of business.

The pullback could be related to the fact that consumers have decided, quite reasonably, that wemightnot want to know this much. It’s just a lot easier to monitor your cortisol levels than it is to do anything about the conditions that produced them, like quit your job, orstop wildfires from happening.

When I spoke to Abbott representatives, I learned that I was not the only one who was squeamish about inserting filaments under my skin. (I am still waiting for myApple Watchto track my blood sugar.)

Still, I finally pulled myself together and inserted the Lingo at Pepcom. Under the watchful guidance of Abbott representatives, I pulled up my shirt sleeve, put the sensor into the dispenser and tapped it onto my skin. It went on with a click. The sensation was similar to someone flicking my arm forcefully with their finger—a slight sting, but not like a thousand needles of fire were going under my skin.

I connected the sensor to the Lingo app and wore it overnight. When I woke up this morning, I discovered—after one night—thatI went hypoglycemicin my sleep. I’ve been bottoming out from walking too much and not eating enough at CES! So much for not providing actionable advice. I’ll eat my words (and a snack before I go to bed).

Read more on wired.com

The health monitoring boom only gets weirder from here (5)

by Adrienne So

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