Wearable health tech is everywhere. Here’s how it works best.

Sleep rings. Fitness watches. Baby “socks” that promise to ease your worries at 3 a.m. What started as a niche wellness trend has become routine — the kind of thing people check before their morning coffee or obsess over when they can’t sleep.

And it’s only growing.

The U.S. fitness tracker industry hit $19 billion in 2024 and could soar to nearly $66 billion by 2032, according to research. Just last week, OpenAI announced it’s rolling out ChatGPT Health, designed to help people make sense of their health data in one secure spot.

“Data is king,” Michael Robertson, regional president of Love. Life, a new holistic wellness concept from the co-founder of Whole Foods, told Glossy. “The more data points we can bring in, and the more we have assistance to correlate that data, the more we can actually accelerate beneficial health outcomes.”

It’s another sign that wellness data isn’t going anywhere, and that more people are trying to understand what their numbers actually mean.

Wearables work best paired with real-life habits

Dr. Trevor Turner, medical director and co-founder of Pravida Health in Atlanta, has spent years using performance data to improve the output of professional athletes and special operations personnel. Now, he sees similar technology landing in the hands of the general public.

Instead of treating wearable numbers like hard truth, Turner tells patients to treat them with context.

“Accuracy is how close we get to the true value, and precision is how repeatable it is,” Turner said in an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, noting he’s seen wearables that seem “precise but then maybe not accurate.”

You can get into even more trouble by assuming every alert means something is wrong. Turner said he has seen patients using glucose monitors panic in the middle of the night.

“If you don’t disable all the alarms, it’ll wake you up at night … and then they’re freaking out,” Turner said.

Overnight drops in blood glucose are normal, he explained.

“Your brain uses ketones overnight as a primary fuel, and you don’t need to have high blood glucose overnight. That’s normal. It’s fine.”

For someone with diabetes, however, those same readings can signal a real problem.

“That’s a different use case,” he said, noting that people who can’t regulate glucose properly need closer monitoring. For everyone else, he said, there’s often an early adjustment period that involves reassurance and learning what the data actually means.

“I encourage people to look for patterns, not perfection,” Turner said. That usually means making small adjustments, like enjoying a glass of wine earlier in the evening instead of right before bed, and watching how those changes show up in the data over several days.

“Make one change, see if it helps, keep it or move on.”

When not tracking is the healthier choice

There are also moments when stepping away from tracking altogether can be the healthiest option. After the birth of their child, Turner said his wife stopped wearing her sleep ring altogether.

“What’s the utility of waking up and being told you slept terribly when you already know?” he said.

In high-stress or transitional phases (new parenthood, illness or travel), data can add pressure rather than support. When that’s the case, Turner encourages what he calls a “wearable holiday.”

“It’s OK to take a break sometimes,” he said.

Even baby wearables follow the same rule

The same principle applies to infant monitoring devices, which have surged in popularity among new parents.

Dr. Deandrea Ellis, a pediatrician at Zarminali Pediatrics in Atlanta, says many families use baby wearables for reassurance, especially overnight or after respiratory-related hospital stays.

But Ellis cautions that these devices work best alongside traditional monitoring and safe sleep practices.

“Baby wearables should never replace safe sleep practices or SIDS prevention guidelines,” Ellis said in an interview with the AJC.

Sleep and recovery trackers, like the Oura Ring, are among the higher-ticket items that can qualify for FSA spending. (Courtesy of Oura Ring)