Patients now have the option to monitor everything. Their sleep, their blood pressure, their electrolytes, their hydration status, their glucose, their physical activity, their stress levels. That option is one of the main drivers of the data tsunami that practitioners are responsible for, and that patients are making decisions about their lives on, whether we are in the room or not.
Wearable ownership among US adults climbed from 30 percent to 41 percent between 2020 and 2024, and across that same window the share of users getting their data to a clinician stayed under one in five. The data exists, but the workflow for bringing it into care mostly does not.
That gap is why device literacy has become part of the job. Wearables used to be for optimization or narrow disease monitoring. Now they produce continuous data that captures signals we would miss asking a patient to recount three months from memory. We are not asking her to remember how she slept or what her glucose did the day she felt dizzy, because the data arrives aggregated, with patterns we can read at a glance.
This continuous data does put real interpretive pressure on us, just from the volume of data points collected. What we get in exchange is the comprehensive picture we have been missing by doing snapshots with biomarkers, and a follow-up visit that becomes efficient in a way it never was. Catching up on what has happened since we last saw the patient stops being an interview and starts being a review.
So before any of that data starts flowing, ask the obvious question. Why is she wearing a wearable at all? The answer decides which device we recommend, what we coach her to capture, and what we ask AI to do with all of it.
Two tiers, and the line keeps moving
The market splits into two tiers, and the split is regulatory. Wellness devices offer trend data and a form factor patients keep wearing. Which one we reach for depends on what we are asking it to do.
Clinical intent | Tier | Examples |
|---|---|---|
Screening or managing a disease | Cleared medical device | Libre 3 / Dexcom G7 for diabetes Whoop MG for AFib Happy Ring for sleep apnea |
Tracking patterns, nothing diagnosed | Wellness | Stelo for metabolic responses Oura for long-term trends |
When a condition is on the table, use the device built and cleared for it, and the evidence backs that instinct. In a 2025 scoping review, 85 percent of wearable-monitoring studies tracked an existing chronic disease, and when devices were used to detect new disease, three quarters of the time the target was cardiovascular. When nothing is being diagnosed, friction matters more than alarms, because the job is months of observation rather than a single diagnostic window. The same reviewers were candid that evidence for clinical effectiveness is still thin, which is a reason to choose intentionally and keep using them.
The line between the tiers keeps moving. Stelo now syncs into Oura. Whoop spent a year arguing with the FDA over its blood-pressure feature, drew a warning letter, reworked it, and saw enforcement dropped in June 2026. In January 2026 the FDA said it will ease premarket review for low-risk wellness wearables while holding the line on medical claims. With the categories shifting twice in twelve months, the safer move is to anchor our recommendation to what we are asking the device to do, since the hardware will keep changing under us.
Coach the context, or the data stays noise
Wearable data with no context is hard to read, because the numbers show what happened and the tags explain why. Pair anything sleep-related with a short journal of the habits around it: caffeine, alcohol, screens. On a CGM, a glucose spike with no meal attached is not too meaningful; the same spike tagged with the meal that caused it is a metabolic response we can coach. But coaching on the in-between can feel like a lot to take on. Train your support team to coach the tagging habit, so the front desk, health coaches, and MAs carry one message: mark the moment when it happens, and leave the meaning for the visit.
Where AI actually earns its place
That is a lot of tagging, and our patients already carry enough homework. Nobody keeps a manual log across months. This is precisely the job AI is for, holding the data so it can surface the signals for the moment we discuss them. The patient stops having to hold the pattern, because the software holds it, and all she has to do is mark the data point.
The willingness is already there. Nearly four in five wearable users say they are open to sharing their data with their clinician, and only about a quarter do.
The clinician side looks the same. In a July 2026 AMA and Medscape survey, 77 percent of US physicians saw a clinical advantage to wearable data, and only 6 percent had integrated it into their workflow. The blockers were the EHR, data accuracy, and liability. As AMA CEO John Whyte put it, the data is available but not actionable, because there is no way to get it into the clinical workflow. What is missing is the plumbing that carries a patient's data into the record where care actually happens.
None of this is autonomous interpretation. AI surfaces what moved together, and we decide what it means, in the room, with the patient. The pattern arrives already gathered, and the read becomes more powerful with the full context of the relationship.
What to try this week
Pick one patient who walks in already wearing a device, and ask her why. Sense-check that she is on the right tier for that reason. Coach one easy habit, tagging the context that makes the data readable, in the spot where she will actually do it. Then ask her to send two weeks of data, and decide together where it connects to her chart. Use clinical-grade AI to help you make sense of the noise.
Be a modern clinician with the help of Ultralight, the AI-native EHR built specifically for functional, integrative, and longevity medicine. We’ve recently launched wearables integrations and improved AI-native clinical workflows - get in touch to see the latest updates.
The business side of independent practice
This week, Sunita sat down with Dr. Philip Deibel of D5 Health and Alex George of Hint Health for a candid conversation on the business of running an independent practice. Dr. Deibel left a conventional OB/GYN practice for a membership longevity model, and the half hour covers what actually made it sustainable: pricing the work to its worth, leaning on AI to hold off burnout, and finding patients through referrals and social media. Watch the full conversation below.
In the news
A wearable now tracks cortisol continuously, the way a CGM tracks glucose. Adaptyx, a Stanford spinout, presented the first multi-day free-cortisol data from a wearable sensor at the ADA sessions. The read is a stress-and-metabolic hormone followed over days instead of a single morning draw. The patients optimizing sleep and stress will ask for it first.
A GLP-1 slowed an aging clock in a randomized trial. In a Nature Communications RCT from UC San Diego, semaglutide slowed DunedinPACE epigenetic aging by about 9 percent in 108 adults with HIV-associated lipohypertrophy. Keep the framing honest with patients: it is one small trial in a specific population. Still, it is the first randomized signal that a GLP-1 reaches the pathways of aging, and our longevity patients will bring it up.
Pharma is now bundling a wearable with the GLP-1 prescription. Oura and LillyDirect will give GLP-1 patients a free Oura ring sizing kit, pairing biometric tracking with the drug. Patients on these medications will arrive already wearing one, which is exactly the data stream this issue is about getting into the record.
Upcoming Conferences & Events
Sept 22–23, MVMNT Longevity Medicine Summit · Coronado, CA · Evidence-graded longevity science, hands-on labs, and clinical frameworks you can implement the week after. Capped at 300 clinicians. Ultralight will be there!
Oct 8–10, A4M Women's Health Summit · San Antonio, TX · The best clinical education on hormone, metabolic, and midlife women's health you will see this year. The room to be in if you are growing the perimenopause and menopause side of your practice.
Oct 21–24, NAMS Annual Meeting · San Diego, CA · The single most practice-changing meeting of the year for midlife women's health. Your protocols will look different after this one.
Nov 5–8, Eudēmonia Summit · West Palm Beach, FL · One of the most talked-about longevity gatherings in the U.S. Experientials, hands-on demos, and the best place to try the emerging frameworks your patients will ask you about next year. Ovation and Ultralight will be there!
Nov 5-7, Private Physicians Alliance Annual Meeting · St. Petersburg, FL · The gathering for independent, cash-pay, and concierge physicians navigating practice independence. Practical and peer-driven. Ultralight will be there!
Nov 8-11, American College of Lifestyle Medicine Conference · Orlando, FL · Lifestyle medicine's main annual event — evidence-based approaches to behavior change, chronic disease, and healthspan. Growing overlap with the longevity medicine community.
Dec 11–13, A4M Longevity Fest · Las Vegas, NV · The biggest longevity event in the U.S. The room spans clinicians, industry, founders, and the people building next year's platforms, and the connections from this one tend to compound through the rest of your year. Ultralight will be there!
Know of an event we should add? Reply and tell us.
Until next Thursday
The wearable on a patient's wrist is already generating the data. The clinical act is deciding what we are asking it for, and making sure the signal reaches us where we work.
Reply and tell us which device you find yourself recommending most, and what you wish it did better. The best ideas in this newsletter come from clinicians doing the work.
Until next Thursday, keep building the practice you imagined when you started.
— Dr. G and Sunita