Health tracker WHOOP expands its offerings to all comers

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  Health tracker consumer brand WHOOP expands its offerings.
  
  


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  Users can opt for clinician consultations with WHOOP-derived information.
  
  


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  Line between consumer and clinical data prompts data-sharing concerns.
  
  

WHOOP has announced a set of updates to its membership platform that expand the company’s focus from fitness tracking into healthcare services and data analysis. The changes include video consultations with clinicians, integration with medical records, and new artificial intelligence tools that draw on user data collected through the WHOOP app and wearable device.

The company plans to launch live video consultations with licensed clinicians in the United States this year, with in-app consultations letting clinicians review information collected through the wearable device before speaking with WHOOP members. The company said the system would combine biometric data with blood test results and medical history when those records were available.

WHOOP also announced support for electronic health record sync-ing through a partnership with HealthEx. The integration will allow users and clinicians to compare medical history with data collected through the WHOOP platform, including information related to recovery and exercise. WHOOP describes the development as part of a broader move towards combining consumer fitness tracking with healthcare records and clinical interpretation.

It’s worth noting that HIPAA in the US

does not consider wearables to be clinical devices

. HIPAA applies to providers conducting electronic transactions, health plans, and healthcare clearinghouses – not to consumer technology companies, which would include those selling annual subscriptions to consumers. Therefore users’ biological signals – heart rhythms during sleep, stress responses, reproductive patterns – receive no more federal protection than data such as a user’s browsing history, according to the

Mozilla Foundation

.

A new feature called Proactive Check-Ins sends recommendations to members based on patterns in their data. WHOOP said it could suggest changes to sleep or training schedules in response to travel, exercise load, or events recorded by the app.

The company also redesigned the WHOOP Journal, which members use to track habits and routines, with users now able to enter information by voice or text. WHOOP said artificial intelligence would suggest new categories for tracking when it detected patterns in user behaviour or biometric data. The company has also added a feature called Behaviour Trends, which shows how logged habits correspond with recovery scores over time.

Future plans include links with training and social applications, changes to the heart rate algorithm, updates to workout detection, and additions to the Strength Trainer feature. The workout detection system is intended to classify activities with less manual input from users.

Data collected by the WHOOP fitness tracker include heart rate, heart rate variability, respiratory rate, skin temperature, blood oxygen levels, sleep metrics, workout intensity, recovery scores, strain calculations, movement data, and physiological data such as age, weight, gender identity, and fitness level. Users may also voluntarily submit information about medications, diet, menstrual cycles, personal habits, and symptoms. WHOOP’s medical and lab services collect biomarkers, laboratory results, clinical notes, and other regulated health indicators.

WHOOP’s

Privacy Policy

states it uses aggregated or de-identified data for research purposes and that it is committed to protecting users’ privacy and security. The company is currently subject to a class action lawsuit in California that claims it shares user data with a third-party tracker embedded in its app, called Segment.

The level of granularity of an individual user’s data collected by any organisation affects the ability of parties to individually ‘fingerprint’ users,

according to

The Guardian


.

Per WHOOP’s Privacy Policy, the company reserves broad rights to use aggregated, de-identified, and anonymised data for research, analytics, commercial development, and product improvement. Users can request deletion, export their information, and manage permissions for some integrations and location tracking.

(Image source: “Triathlon Athlete” by JohnFinn is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Licence

.)

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