Uprising Wellness Technology Trends And Leading Companies
The world is a fast-moving place. We, as a race, have come from days of fire and wooden wheels to a century where different time zones are just one plane journey apart. In this time of shrinking distances and enhanced conveniences, wellness and fitness are one of those domains that have benefited greatly- thanks to the ever-evolving technology.
As an area of interest, fitness has caught the rage over the last decade. What started as a quest for that perfect body has evolved into a quest for a healthier body. Fitness has evolved not only as a goal but also in its meaning and approaches. Gone are the days when that fit and perfect body required a gym membership- just like time zones, your health lies just on your fingertips or wrist!
This is why the Global Wellness Institute expects the Wellness Tech Industry to reach nearly $7 Trillion in 2025.
Put together in this blog are the various aspects of wellness technology- its merits, types, platforms, leading companies and a lot more.
How Has The Development of Technology Positively Affected Our Wellness?
Is technology a boon or a bane? This question is something that will always be up there for debate. While a number of people believe technology has negative effects, many are adamant about the fact that technology, indeed, is impactful.
Whatever the conclusion is, technology is inevitably immensely influential (the original Influencer!)
Technology has brought several positive impacts on our well-being. The influences of technology on our well-being are hard to miss. Technology caters to everything from our sleep cycles to behavioral patterns to tracking daily activities.
Gone are the days when information had to be scavenged. Technology has made information readily available at the click of a few taps. People can now access a wide range of resource materials to help care for their health and well-being. Wellness technology takes care of everything from workouts to meal plans.
Put together, here are ways in which technology helps in upholding wellness.
Motivation
Well-being technologies offer rewards and incentives for achieving tasks and fitness goals. These challenges mostly come gamified to engage the user more in their fitness journey, leveraging greater computer power as well as human will.
Wellness apps put forward challenges and tasks which motivate users to be more active, furthermore when they are rewarded.
Increased Accountability
Keeping friends and family in the loop increases motivation and accountability. Many well-being technologies allow users to share their progress with them. Wellness/Fitness apps also hold one accountable who genuinely wants to achieve personal health goals.
Users have the flexibility to set goals for themselves and can hold themselves accountable if they procrastinate to do so.
Convenience
The new-age fitness gadgets are portable and convenient. Wellbeing tech products like wearable fitness trackers and wellness apps allow access and usage at the user's comfort.
Tracking and monitoring fitness goals have never been easier. Users can use these wellness technologies wherever and whenever they want.
Increased Awareness
Wellness Tech can track and monitor various aspects of our health and fitness. This includes sleep patterns, nutrition, and physical activity.
Identifying areas we need to improve helps us better understand our overall health. With social media and smartphones offering digital well-being, users are now more aware of digital detox and screen times.
Wellness Tech Trends
As the name goes, wellness technology is a technology developed with the intent of aiding in physical and mental health and overall well-being.
This includes various apps, wearables, and devices. All of these technologies- apps, wearables, devices, take care of the various aspects of holistic well-being.
Wellness technologies make focusing on just the action part easier by-
Tracking activities, workouts, calorie count, water intake, sleep, and mood.
These wellness technologies do the heavy lifting of-
Keeping track, logging, calculating, and tabulating.
The various wellness technologies we see around us can be widely categorized into different wellness technology trends. These technologies focus on holistic well-being by basing their primary focus on different aspects of it.
Some are based on physical activities, some on mental health, and others on corporate well-being. Some focus on accessibility, some on diet and nutrition, and others on accuracy and on-the-go.
Listed in this blog are the various technology trends and some examples of segment leading companies to help you jump right on it.
The Global Wellness Summit indicates workplace, travel, cities, water, skin, weight, and beauty as the domains to see the biggest wellness technology shifts in 2023
Wearable Wellness Technologies
Wearables are the new cool! These come in the form of stylish, easy-to-carry, accessible watches and fitness bands. They are equipped with various parameters of well-being markers set in them.
The new-age wearables are advanced enough to keep track of your heart rate, blood pressure, and blood oxygen levels, amongst others. Wearables track your daily activities and calculate your calorie burn, distance, and pace. These are easy to carry with you and perform activities in. With features like geolocation, they are almost accurate and keep a reliable tag.
Wearables and fitness platforms are mostly intertwined- with many wellness tech companies investing in both wearables and wellness platforms. The wearables can also be connected withwellness platforms for extended features and thorough documentation.
Fitbit
Fitbit is an electronics and fitness company based in America. They are the wearable pioneers. Fitbit produces wearable technology and other physical fitness monitors.
These wearables are Bluetooth enabled and wireless making them easy to carry and effortless.
Equipped with activity trackers, a blood oxygen SPO2 monitor, and a heart rate calculator, this is wellness on your wrist (literally).
Leading Tech Companies
Companies have scaled heights regarding wearable technologies on a budget. These affordable, stylish, yet feature-packed smartwatches from the companies are light and durable and give you wellness with a style factor.
These are packed with features like blood oxygen SPO2 monitor, heart rate monitor, and blood pressure monitor and give you real-time data of your activities through their step calculator.
Wellness wearables also give you a count of your calories burned through their calculations.
It is Bluetooth enabled and can be connected to mobiles and wellness platforms for detailed tracking. BOAT, NOISE, SAMSUNG, GARMIN, AMAZFIT, and, ofcourse, APPLE are some industry segment leaders.
Technology for Meditation and Mindfulness
Mental health as an aspect of well-being has gained momentum over the last decade. People are quickly coming to realize the importance of mental health and its place and importance for health and fitness. Unless a person is physically and mentally healthy, health problems will persist.
Gone are the days when one had to walk out and enroll with instructors for yoga lessons because those bending and mending poses looked too tough to attempt on your own. Meditation apps are bringing meditation and mindfulness to your room.
These apps are popular because of their flexible nature- there is something for everyone. Mindfulness wellness tech platforms help release stress, decompress lower anxiety, and battle depression.
Calm
Calm is a frontrunner in this segment of wellness technology. It is built around the saying, “ Where the mind is, the body follows.” This award-winning app helps users practice mindfulness and achieve better mental health.
The Calm platform has several guided meditation plans and sleep stories for users. Through its approach, the app helps people sleep better. Helps lower stress and anxiety levels and experience better mental health.
Headspace
Centered around meditation, Headspace aims to increase happiness and focus through better mental health. The wellness app has guided meditation plans, sound sleep therapies, coaching, and psychiatry. Headspace zeroes in on holistic happiness and helps to reduce real-time stress and anxiety and gain relaxation. Headspace proposes a night of happy sleep.
Employee Wellness Tech
At a period where time is the real luxury, it is no surprise that the overall health of people is declining. Post the COVID era, the necessity of employee wellness has caught on to the wellness technology trends. Many platforms that provide wellness technology also extend the program to employers to ensure the well-being of the employees through technology.
Workplaces are high-stress, intense places. Employees experience significant stress, anxiety, and pressure, making them unfocused, unhappy, and distressed in the long run. It is vital to protect the mental and physical health of the employees.
But with little to no time to spare, this is easier said than done. That is where employee wellness tech comes into play.
These wellness technology platforms curate packages for corporate well-being. The idea is to cater to employees’ needs and help them achieve their holistic health goals.
Vantage Fit
Vantage Fit is a people-first employee wellness app provided by Vantage Circle. It is designed for enterprises. Vantage Fit focuses on promoting healthier lifestyles and habits for preventive health and fitness. It has a built-in framework for fitness challenges.
The app tracks physical activities such as walking, running, and workouts. The mobile app also maps outdoor activities such as runs, jogs, and even evening walks using a gyroscope sensor and GPS data.
With concise yet impactful features such as a Mood Tracker, Heart Rate Monitor, Seven Minute Workoutss, Meal, and Gym Diaries, Vantage Fit aims to raise awareness towards health & wellness.
You can also keep track of your health profile and fitness score in the My Health section. You can track your nutrition intake and gain insights into weight management. Leverage the assistive calorie tracker to check your calorie expenditure via activities.
The app also provides challenges and contests for users to participate in and engage with real-time leaderboards. Employees receive reward points for the completion of such challenges.
With timely reminders for meals and water intake, Vantage Fit assists you in taking control of your nutrition. The reminders for mood tracking take care of your mental health.
Keeping track of nutrition can be a pickle. Vantage Fit has a catalog of 4000+ food items to make it feasible. The catalog provides vital nutritional info, such as each food item's carbohydrate, protein, and fat content.
Vantage Fit also supports the seamless integration of popular fitness trackers. A custom-built Heart Rate Monitor leverages the power of computational image processing to detect and measure your heart rate without needing any smartwatch or fitness band.
Suggested Read: How to Sync Vantage Fit with Your Android Devices and Wearables: Step-by-step Guide
It features an AI-powered squat tracker</a to keep track of your squats and help perfect the technique.
Other features include BMI Calculator, Calorie tracker, Customizable Trophies & Badges. Vantage Fit offers incentivization through Fitness Points & Gift Cards.
With a growing fitness and wellness community, you can share your progress, learn, and reach your goals with every step.
Grokker
A corporate wellbeing platform, Grokker combines health and well-being video content with community engagement to improve employee mental and physical health. It also focuses on emotional and financial health, taking the holistic specter to a different level altogether.
AI Trainer
Artificial intelligence has been integrated into our daily lives through AI apps and platforms. AI in wellness technology has taken working out and fitness routines to a new feasibility level.
AI personal trainers ingrained in the wearables and wellness platforms have eased the hassle of finding a personal trainer that works for you. It molds itself to your needs and requirements and presents the optimum results.
They are precise, accurate, and data-driven and have a variety of content up and ready for the user. Working out in the comfort of your home and schedule is made achievable by AI personal trainers. It takes care of your technique, so you don't end up hurting yourself.
AI trainers log your progress, keep count of your variables, and promote healthier choices.
Vantage Fit has an inbuilt AI-powered squat tracker that helps you track your squats properly and count the progress.
Lululemon Studio Mirror
The Lululemon studio mirror is a unique and immersive fitness experience. True to its name, it features a high-end interactive mirror. The mirror offers more than 10000 fitness classes to unique and immersive users in the comfort of their homes.
Workout mirrors have become increasingly popular because of their sleek aesthetics. These types of equipment give you a full-body workout without going to the gym or stressing about the technique being lost due to small screens.
You can simultaneously focus on your form while looking at your instructors. While turned off, these mirrors look like any other mirror and blend in with your interiors. As opposed to bulky steel frame pulleys and weights that are cumbersome to store.
The Mirror was the flagbearer of this technology. Now under Lululemon Studios, it is evolving to include more wellness content and fitness classes. It pairs with the app and gives access to one-on-one personal training and resources.
Artifit
Artifit is an AI-powered pocket app that works as your personal workout assistant. It can identify 20 different joint movements and enables users to work safely at home. The training plans engage AI to target the correct muscles, yielding effective results. Arifit keeps a log of reps, pace, and time and gives real-time feedback on techniques.
MR/AR Headset
AR/MR offers an immersive and interactive visual experience in real time. MR/VR/AR lets one experience near-eyed visual stimulations.
In AR or augmented reality, users can see virtual graphics or characters on top of real-world visuals with real-world visuals in the backdrop. Here is a fun experience you can indulge in - You can set a line as a target point for your push-ups and try to hit the target. AI and AR will count how many of those push-ups could hit the target.
MR, or mixed reality, is an immersive mix of real and virtual worlds. MR consists of visuals from real and computer-generated images which requires a headset to be experienced.
People can use these technologies to exercise daily and undergo therapy from their homes. These technologies also help people with conditions such as anxiety, stress, and PTSD. The use of headsets has unlocked a new dimension of visual experience in 3D.
These technologies unlock a bigger human-computer potential with a 3D experience.
APPLE AR/MR Headsets
Cupertino tech giants are planning a potential next big thing with their upcoming launch. Apple’s AR/VR mixed reality headsets are all set to be launched soon. Apple AR headsets will feature extensive health and wellness support.
The AR/MR headset is expected to offer well-being features such as exercise and meditation, reports Business Insider. The headset will feature optimized software tools and motor lenses that adjust automatically.
Fitness and Diet Apps
Taking to the saying that only exercise can never work the entire way, diet plays an equally important part. There are wellness platforms that focus on the diet and food section of wellness.
These platforms have inbuilt AI that provide tailor-made diet plans and count calories. They come with a directory of recipes around the world, recipes, and workout plans. These platforms have eased the hassle of maintaining a diet chart and keeping logs of calories and food restrictions.
It has gamified this much-dreaded aspect of well-being and has made diet and fitness enjoyable.
HealthifyMe
HealthifyMe, as a wellness platform, focuses more on the diet and nutrition part of well-being. It has the largest variety of Indian food and dietary values. The program is equipped to connect with devices to track and build the best program for individuals.
The wellness app gives access to top trainers and has an inbuilt panel of 80+ key metabolic features. This can aid in uncovering or catering to any underlying medical condition. It has customizable features for varied fitness goals and includes nutrition tracking. It also includes features such as activity tracking, calorie count, and water intake.
On a freemium model, the app offers AI nutrition and diet planners for fitness and mental coaching. HealthifyMe has its virtual assistant RIA for quick resolving of queries and support.
Strava
Strava is one of the most commonly used fitness apps by runners. The app lets you log your running, riding, or hiking and calculates your pace. The app is GPS enabled and times and logs your outdoor activities for you. The social feature lets you share pictures, follow friends, join challenges, and post your activities.
Its interactive interface makes it engaging and motivating. Strava is a good choice for those who enjoy the social aspect of running. It builds motivation and keeps the joy of running high.
Noom
Noom started out as a weight-regulating platform that evolved into something much more. Scientific studies on behavior and food back it. Noom focuses on the behavioral aspect of well-being and helps users by connecting them with their trained coaches.
They share the belief that equipping people with the knowledge of behavioral psychology will help them lead a better, happier life with positively changed habits. Noom uses cognitive behavioral therapy to help users build sustainable habits.
Telemedicine
Telemedicine or Telehealth is a form of wellness tech that caters to people's health needs at their fingertips. Telemedicine offers remote healthcare and treatment via information technology. This technology allows patients to connect to healthcare providers without needing to visit them in person.
All that is required is a smartphone or a laptop with a camera, internet or SMS, and a calling feature to communicate. It helps skip the queue and the hassle of appointments, waiting and traveling. This comes in handy for the elderly and disabled- people for whom traveling for a physical assessment might not always be feasible.
Apollo24x7
Ventured by Apollo Hospitals, Apollo24x7 platform brings the amenities of a hospital visit to the comfort of your home. Through this platform, one can book appointments, look for nearby Apollo hospitals, and book lab tests and consultations. Not only booking but they also extend the feature of at-home services and online consultation and medicine delivery.
Doctor on Demand
The telehealth platform focuses on 24-hour urgent care and therapy sessions. Users can avail of online therapy and psychiatric sessions and opt for online doctor consultations. They cover mental health, colds and flu, allergies, skin conditions, and everyday care in the domain. Doctor on Demand stands out with its inclusion of mental health care options.
Conclusion
Impacts of technology? It will remain a savvy question. But in the domain of wellness, technology is proving to be the assistance everyone needs and deserves. In a fast-paced world like ours, time is a rare commodity.
Finding the time to place ourselves under routine and discipline, spending dedicated time to calculate results and outcomes, keeping a log of progress and diet- it all can prove to be too much.
Finding the time for dedicated physical activities can sound far-fetched for some. At such times, wellness technology trends have brought people closer to a health-problem-free life. They give people the power to choose what works for them.
Wearables and fitness platforms have made tracking simple activities effortless.
Well-being is a big concept, enough to scare away people from starting. But the wellness trends break down a much bigger goal into smaller, achievable steps and make them enjoyable. Mental and physical well-being is an achievable feat for everyone.
FAQ
How does wellness technology work?
Wellness tech works by measuring and analyzing various health and well-being metrics, like your physical activity, sleep, mental health, stress levels, and others health assistance. With this information and by providing personalized insights and recommendations, wellness technology can improve your overall well-being.
What are some common Wellness technologies?
There has been rapid progress in wellness technology. This includes emerging technologies such as fitness-tracking wearables and mobile health apps, digital stress management and mental health tools, and sleep-tracking devices. Some rising wellness techs are workplace wellness technologies and online coaching applications.
What are wellness technologies trending in fitness?
Current trends in wellness technology around fitness include wearable fitness trackers, virtual fitness classes, smart exercise equipment, mobile fitness apps powered by AI, and employee wellness techs. Tracking your health and fitness is easier and more convenient with these cutting-edge tools
Why is workplace wellness important?
Workplace wellness technologies assist employees in looking after their health and HR to ensure their workforce’s wellness. Employees work hard round the year, mostly at the expense of overall wellness. Workplace wellness technologies like Vantage Fit bridge this gap from employee burnout to employee wellness, resulting in a healthier and more productive workforce.
Vantage Fit - A complete AI-Powered Solution for seamless implementation of your Corporate Wellness Program to nurture a healthy and engaged workforce