5 Reasons Why Health Wearables Are In Demand
As we accelerate our investment journey here at My Ripple, it's exciting to see that 2025 is showing strong investor appetite and confidence in the wearables market.
Recent examples include Finnish wearable, OURA, closing a Series D $200million raise, Irish sports tech startup, Output Sports securing over 4 million euros for its athlete tracking software and as we write today, early stage startup, Pulsetto - a wearable for stress relief, secured 2 million euros.
Investment in health wearables is clearly thriving right now and there are many reasons why investors view our market as buoyant and ripe for greater growth. Want to know more? Here’s 5 main reasons:
1. Consumer demand is growing
Perhaps the overwhelming driver for the health of our market is quite simply that consumers clearly want wearables!
The wearable technology market was valued at USD 62.54 billion in 2023 and is expected to grow to USD 198.83 billion by 2032. This is a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 13.70%.
Well known and trusted brands like Apple, Fitbit, Garmin, and Samsung are offering a wide range of options at different price points, making wearables more attractive and accessible to a larger audience.
People are becoming more educated and proactive about their personal health. This is being driven by a growing awareness of chronic diseases and the associated importance of maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Health wearables provide easy access to tracking key health metrics, encouraging healthier habits.
With busy lifestyles, consumers are increasingly looking for devices that seamlessly integrate into their daily routines. Health wearables offer a convenient way to track and manage health without requiring significant time or effort, leading to increased adoption and investment.
Beyond the health benefits, and possibly an even more powerful consumer influence, wearables are becoming stylish and fashionable. Devices are blending function with fashion, using trending colours and styles to chime with consumer demands - and their outfits!
2. Longevity is Looming
We’re all predicted to live longer. Both a modern day blessing and a future challenge!
As the global population ages, there’s a growing demand from both consumers and public health systems for solutions that help manage age-related health concerns.
Facing a “broken NHS”, the UK government has already unveiled a proposal to give wearables to millions of NHS patients in England, enabling them to track symptoms - such as reactions to cancer treatments remotely and from home.
For older adults, wearables with fall detection capabilities can alert caregivers or emergency services in case of a fall, potentially preventing serious injuries and hospital stays.
Wearables can also be used to continuously monitor conditions like diabetes, hypertension, blood pressure and asthma, allowing for better management and timely adjustments to treatment plans.
Some wearables can remind users to take medications at scheduled times, enhancing medication compliance.
In summary, wearables can monitor chronic conditions, track vital signs, and alert users or caregivers to potential issues, making them a valuable tool for elderly care.
3. Demand For Data
Wearables data is valuable. The gold rush for health data is a crucial outcome of the wearables industry and AI is propelling quality and access to data even faster.
Wearables generate vast amounts of user data, which can be monetized through insights and advertising.
Wearables data has value because it provides a continuous, real-time stream of detailed information about a person's health, activity levels, and environment, offering insights that are difficult to gather through traditional methods.
Unlike traditional health checkups, wearables track metrics like heart rate, blood pressure, oxygen levels, sleep patterns, and activity levels 24/7.
This enables early detection of health issues, improving preventive care and reducing medical emergencies.
In turn, this enables personalized interventions, better healthcare management, and valuable market research opportunities across various sectors like fitness, healthcare and consumer goods; essentially painting a comprehensive picture of any individual's daily life, without requiring significant user effort to collect data.
The use of health data overall can be used for a variety of purposes including research to develop new treatments, improving patient care, identifying risk factors and optimizing healthcare delivery systems.
4. Market Adoption and Expansion
Wearables have traditionally occupied the wheelhouse of sport and fitness but this is changing and creating even greater opportunity.
Beyond fitness tracking, wearables are now used in gaming, workplace productivity, and safety. Industries like defense, the military, logistics, and sports are adopting wearables for efficiency and monitoring.
Businesses are using wearables for employee wellness, safety (e.g., fatigue monitoring in industrial settings), and productivity enhancement.
Wearable companies are increasingly offering new ‘add on’ premium services, such as health coaching and exclusive app features, via subscriptions, creating new revenue streams.
In our case at My Ripple, we recognise that our device can play a crucial role in monitoring hydration for a wide variety of consumer use cases - that also go beyond fitness monitoring. These include pregnancy, menopause and healthy aging.
Overall, the wearable technology market is poised for substantial expansion, with projections estimating it could reach USD 493.26 billion by 2030, growing at a CAGR of 17.6% from 2025 to 2030.
5. Insurance influencers
Insurance & Corporate Wellness Programs
A strong demand for wearables now goes beyond consumers and government.
Insurance providers and employee wellness programmes are engaging with health wearables for a variety of reasons.
Employers incentivize wearables for healthier employees. Companies now also offer discounts or rewards for active lifestyle tracking. Equally employers use wearables to monitor employee wellness, reducing workplace injuries and insurance costs.
Insurance companies are investing in wearable technology because it provides valuable health data, reduces risks, and enhances customer engagement. Wearables offer real-time health insights, allowing insurers to assess individual risks more accurately. Data from fitness trackers, smartwatches, and health monitors help adjust policy premiums based on lifestyle and activity levels.
Continuous health monitoring enables early detection of medical conditions, reducing hospitalization rates. Encouraging healthier lifestyles through wearables can lower long-term insurance payouts.
Some insurers use wearables to offer usage-based insurance (UBI), where premiums change based on health habits. This model is already seen in auto insurance with telematics, and wearables bring it to health and life insurance.
Wearables also help insurers tap into younger, tech-savvy demographics who are more likely to engage in digital health programmes through wearables.
Companies offering wearable-driven plans gain a competitive edge in the evolving insurtech market.
We’re excited about the strength of our market and welcome investors to explore our business funding round and investor presentation here.