Whoop, the wearable biometric tracker used by athletes and embraced by the NFLPA, is expanding beyond the world of athletics and into healthcare.
The device is one of a few health monitors being used in a four-week sleep study that will look at patients with Type 1 diabetes. The research is being run by Evidation Health, a health data company, and Tidepool, an open source not-for-profit diabetes data provider.
Using connected devices including the Dexcom continuous glucose monitor, Emfit sleep monitor, and Whoop activity tracker, researchers plan to study how overnight blood sugar levels affect next-day behavior, activity, heart rates, and sleep patterns.
“Linking real world data from connected devices with other medical data in virtual studies allow us to measure how behaviors—outside of the doctor’s office or hospital—affect health and impact outcomes,” said Evidation Health CEO Deborah Kilpatrick in a statement.
The partnership uses Evidation’s data platform, which analyzes large-scale sensor and behavior data from a growing list of more than 100 data sources, including devices such as Apple Watch, Fitbit, and Dexcom.
SportTechie Takeaway
Consumer wearable devices, such as Apple Watch and Fitbit, are increasingly upping their healthcare game by participating in medical-grade studies. Last week, Apple announced a new ECG sensor built into its watch has been approved by the FDA. Fitbit is currently participating in a year-long federal research study led by Scripps Research Institute and has teamed up with Google to further integrate user data into the healthcare system via Google’s Cloud Healthcare API.
Whoop, which has received investment from the NFLPA via its athlete-driven accelerator, OneTeam Collective, is currently deployed across the NFL to track athlete performance. The Whoop Strap 2.0 has been used to study the effects of injury, travel, scheduling, and other variables that affect recovery to figure out how to keep players off the disabled list and optimize performance. Its use in this medical-grade study with Evidation and Tidepool signals that it may be starting to follow Apple and Fitbit deeper into the world of healthcare.