Wearables Are No Longer Just Watches
It feels like barely a day passes without another headline about the wearable market and everybody is already anticipating news about a next move by the big players in that space or new market entrants.
From the outside, it looks like the whole category revolves around wrists and fingers.
But then — occasionally — you read stories about flatulence-tracking underwear, intravaginal fertility trackers, or ingestable capsules that are able to record their journey through your intestines.
That is when you realize that the category is supposedly much broader — and interesting — than the headlines suggest.
Wearables, and increasingly nearables, are no longer just consumer gadgets. Beyond consumer use, they have become important, and in some cases irreplaceable, medical tools: for glucose monitoring, cardiac rhythm tracking, sleep diagnostics, seizure detection, remote patient monitoring, pregnancy care, rehabilitation, insulin delivery, and neuromodulation.
They are becoming a broader layer of body-data infrastructure: devices worn on the body, placed near the body, or even used inside the body to measure, interpret, and sometimes act on physiological, behavioral, environmental, and therapeutic signals.
In the new Wearables & Nearables Explorer, we mapped 136 products from 123 companies across 11 wearable categories, that track more than 200 biomarkers and signals. The result is a clearer view of where the body, and the environment around it, are becoming measurable.
Explore the full Wearables & Nearables Map here:
130+ products, 200+ biomarkers and signals, company geography, product stages, form factors, and categories.
Browse the full company and product database • Filter by form factor, market, and product stage • Compare biomarkers and signals across categories • Navigate the interactive market map • and more
Wearables vs. Nearables
In our map, we didn't stop at wearables — devices worn on or in the body — but also included nearables — sensing devices that are not worn, but still capture body-adjacent or health-relevant signals from the surrounding environment. Examples include under-mattress sleep sensors, room-based monitoring, personal air-quality monitors, and environmental exposure devices.
Nearables can make health data more passive and more contextual at the same time. Sleep quality may depend on temperature, noise, light, air quality, and breathing patterns. Metabolic signals may be shaped by meals, movement, stress, and environment. Recovery looks different at home, at work, while traveling, or during training.
The broader trend that we see emerging here: health measurement is becoming more ambient. Not every useful signal will require a device strapped to the body. Some data will come from rooms, beds, clothing, utensils, cars. The future of measurement may be less about asking people to track everything manually, and more about building environments that help explain the conditions around health. By integrating context, many biomarkers become much more useful.
Where The Map Is Densest
If we use product entries as a proxy for market activity, the current map is densest in five areas: metabolic and biochemical wearables, cardiovascular and clinical monitoring, mainstream health and fitness, femtech and reproductive devices, and therapeutic or drug-delivery systems.
The largest category is metabolic and biochemical wearables, with 24 entries. This is where the field moves beyond basic activity and vital-sign tracking into chemistry, metabolism, nutrition response, hydration, and molecular monitoring. CGMs are still the anchor, but the broader direction is clear: more biochemical sensing, more continuous metabolic context, and more attempts to translate molecular signals into everyday decisions.
Cardiovascular and clinical monitoring follows with 22 entries. This is one of the most mature parts of the market. Here, wearables are already moving beyond wellness into regulated workflows, clinical follow-up, home-based monitoring, and disease-specific use cases.
Mainstream health and fitness wearables remain a major cluster, with 18 entries. This category is less exotic, but important because it sets consumer expectations for continuous tracking: sleep, recovery, activity, heart rate, HRV, temperature, SpO2, and related features have become familiar entry points into body-data products.
Femtech and reproductive wearables account for 15 entries and are among the most diverse categories. They cover fertility, pregnancy, pelvic-floor health, lactation, menstrual tracking, hormone-related signals, and menopause-adjacent use cases. These products make visible a set of signals that have historically been undermeasured.
Therapeutic, drug-delivery, and augmentation wearables include 14 entries. This category matters because it shifts the frame from sensing to action. These products do not simply observe the body. They intervene, stimulate, assist, deliver therapy, or provide feedback.
Biomarkers And Signals Are Not The Same Thing
Across the database, we track more than 200 distinct biomarkers and signals. Some are familiar physiological measures: heart rate, ECG waveform, glucose, SpO2, respiratory rate, skin temperature, blood pressure, cortisol, lactate, and body temperature.
Others are not biomarkers in the strict biological sense, but still matter for wearable health data. These include gait disruptions, eating speed, insulin delivery events, haptic feedback, camera images, sleep-stage classification, therapy response, and device-control signals.
That distinction is important. A wearable that measures glucose is different from one that detects eating behavior. A device that records an ECG waveform is different from one that infers stress from a composite score.
Nearables expand the signal set further by capturing context around the body: sleep environment, air quality, noise exposure, temperature, humidity, radon concentrations, particulate matter, or volatile organic compounds (VOCs).
What we observe is that wearables are moving from single-marker tracking toward context-rich models of the body. A glucose value becomes much more useful when it is connected to meals, sleep, stress, movement, medication, and recovery.
There is still a lot of room to turn poorly captured daily health states into useful decisions by combining better sensors, multi-signal pattern recognition, validation, interpretation, and action into one coherent health loop.
What To Watch Next
Sensors are becoming smaller, cheaper, lower-power, more continuous, and more closely matched to the body location where a signal actually exists.
The trend is not simply “smaller wearables.” It is better form-factor fit. The most interesting products are often those where the form factor is not decorative, but functional: it gives the sensor access to a signal that a smartwatch cannot see well.
But the most important area to watch is not the next sensor technology, but the layer above the sensors.
As wearables and nearables multiply, users will not want ten separate dashboards, ten readiness scores, and ten different explanations of their body. They will gravitate toward solutions that integrate data across devices, apps, labs, calendars, nutrition, sleep, exercise, environment, and medical context, then translate it into a coherent view of what is happening and what to do next.
Early examples in this space are already emerging. Bevel positions itself as a connected health coach that combines wearables, bloodwork, and lifestyle data into recommendations. Vora describes itself as an AI health operating system, connecting wearables, calendars, nutrition, recovery, and training into adaptive daily plans. Oura Advisor, WHOOP Advanced Labs, Garmin Connect+, and Google Health Coach show that major device ecosystems are also moving from tracking toward interpretation, coaching, and integrated guidance.
On the infrastructure side, data-network layers are emerging that help product developers and consumers intregrate multiple wearable devices and data from other data sources. Examples here are: Terra, Validic, Human API or Evidation.
This layer also has the highest trust burden. Bad interpretation is worse than no interpretation. The winners in this category will need strong data access, careful validation, privacy protection, and explainability — and provide behavioural nudges that are followed without becoming coercive, anxiety-inducing, or overly prescriptive.
The Geography Of Wearables
A quick look at where the products come from shows that the map is still heavily concentrated in the United States. In the current database, just over half of the mapped companies, brands, and research teams are headquartered there.
At the same time, the Explorer now spans 20 headquarter countries, showing that wearables and nearables are developing across several regional ecosystems rather than from one dominant geography alone.
Consumer health, regulated medical devices, sports performance, women’s health, sleep, environmental exposure, rehabilitation, and therapeutic systems each follow different commercial, regulatory, and clinical paths. The global map helps show where those different centers of gravity are forming, and where specialized body-data companies may emerge next.
The Business Model Is Changing Too
As wearables and nearables move closer to intimate health data, trust becomes part of the product. A step count is one thing. Other signals reveal much more sensitive information that needs proper handling and protection.
That changes what users should expect from companies. Who owns the data? Who can access it? Can it be shared with insurers, employers, clinics, researchers, device partners, or AI platforms? Can users delete it, export it, or even benefit from contributing it?
For companies, the device is increasingly only the entry point. The recurring value sits in subscriptions, monitoring, coaching, diagnostics, clinical workflows, data infrastructure, companion layers for drugs and therapies, and the longitudinal data they keep accumulating over time.
The tension is obvious. Companies want users to measure more, subscribe longer, and stay inside proprietary ecosystems. Clinicians want continuous data, but not every signal is actionable. Users want insight without surrendering control.
Conclusion
Wearables and nearables are no longer a single product category. They are becoming a set of sensing, feedback, and intervention systems distributed across the body and its surroundings: on the wrist, skin, finger, foot, ear, eye, mouth, abdomen, inside the gut, under the mattress, and in the environment around us.
But the future of wearables will not be decided by what they can measure. It will depend on interpretation, validation, trust, privacy, and integration into the broader health journey. A signal only becomes useful when it helps someone understand what is happening, make better decisions, or receive better care.
That is the real challenge ahead: turning continuous data into meaningful context without creating more noise, anxiety, or false precision.
There is also a philosophical question underneath the category. If more of the body becomes continuously measurable, what kind of relationship do people develop with themselves? Wearables can help people notice patterns they would otherwise miss. They can also make the body feel like a system that is always under inspection.
If you want to go beyond this article, start with the interactive Explorer. It is designed as a living map of the wearable and nearable body-data stack: companies, products, signals, biomarkers, form factors, validation status, and geography in one place.
Companies And Products Covered (extract)
The Wearables & Nearables Explorer currently includes 130+ products and development examples across metabolic, cardiovascular, sleep, femtech, therapeutic, sensory, gut, environmental, movement, and smart-textile categories.
Metabolic and biochemical: Vivoo Smart Toilet; Spoonified intelligent utensil; Lumen; Abbott Lingo; Abbott FreeStyle Libre; Dexcom G7; SIBIONICS CGM; Eversense 365; Adaptyx Continuous Molecular Monitoring platform; Hormometer; CORTI; Gx Sweat Patch; Nix Hydration Biosensor; hDrop; Stressomic sweat biosensor; Dexcom Stelo; Discovery Patch Sweat Collection System; Wireless mouthguard sensor; Lab-on-a-Patch; Biolinq Shine; GraphWear sweat biosensor; FLOWBIO Sensor; Kenzen Patch.
Cardiovascular and clinical: Hilo Band; CART BP; Zio; KardiaMobile / KardiaMobile 6L; PKG Watch; VitalPatch; Empatica EpiMonitor; Happy Ring; WatchPAT; NightOwl; Apple Apple Watch; Samsung Galaxy Watch; HeartGuide; Biobeat Chest Monitor / Wrist Monitor; CAM Patch; BioButton; Wesper Lab / Wesper Lite; Huawei Watch D2; Dozee Contactless Vitals / Early Warning System; Centrella Smart+ Bed with contact-free monitoring; Empatica EmbracePlus; Empatica EmbraceMini.
Mainstream health and fitness: Garmin HRM-Pro; Polar H10; Wahoo TRACKR HEART RATE; Wahoo TICKR FIT; WHOOP 5.0 / WHOOP MG; Hexoskin Smart Shirt / Hexoskin Medical System; Oura Ring; RingConn Gen 3; Samsung Galaxy Ring; Ring Air; Apple Apple Watch; Garmin Garmin Venu 3; Google Pixel Watch / Fitbit Charge 6; Samsung Galaxy Watch; Circular Ring; Evie Ring; Amazfit Helio Ring; Heart-Aid Kit / SKIIN Connected Clothing System.
Femtech and reproductive: kegg; Ava Fertility; FlowPad; OvuCore; MenstruAI; Elvie Elvie Trainer; PERI; Bloomlife Smart Pregnancy Tracker; INVU; Smart Menstrual Cup; OvulaRing; Elvie Elvie Pump; Willow Go; trackleCatch Zykluscomputer; Perifit Care.
Therapeutic and drug-delivery: Omnipod 5; t:slim X2 / Mobi with Control-IQ; ZenoWell Vita / ZenoWell Luna; Quell Fibromyalgia; Nerivio / Theranica; Miamind Neurostimulator; EksoNR; Lifeward / ReWalk Robotics; CeQur Simplicity; iLet Bionic Pancreas; EOPatch; Cefaly Enhanced; Flow headset; Atalante X.
Eye, ear, brain and sensory: Waveband; FRENZ Brainband; Muse 2 Headband / Muse S Athena; Nuance Audio Glasses; GlakoLens smart contact lens; XPANCEO smart contact lens prototypes; Triggerfish; Naox Technologies NAOX LINK; Naox Technologies NAOX WAVE; NextSense Smartbuds; Lumia 2.
Smart textiles, feet, wounds and skin: Siren Socks; Sensoria Smart Socks; Stanford smart bandage; Digitsole Pro; ReGo; My Skin Track UV; Swift Ray; FeetMe Monitor; SI Sensory Insoles; The90 Gem.
Gut, ingestibles and flatulence: AIRE 2; Medtronic PillCam SB3; Smart Underwear / Human Flatus Atlas; Medtronic SmartPill Motility Testing System; Atmo Gas Capsule; Vibrant System; CapsoCam Plus; NaviCam; Suna Health.
Sleep and recovery nearables: Withings Sleep Analyzer; Pod / Pod Cover; Sleep Number smart bed / SleepIQ; Emfit QS / Emfit CARE; Somnofy; SleepScore Max; Bryte Balance smart mattress; Sleeptracker-AI; Lucid Pro.
Environmental and occupational: Wave Plus; Quest Edge / OmniWear; PRO 2; uHoo Caeli; uHoo SAM / uHoo Smart Air Monitor; uHoo Aura; AirBeam3.
Movement, gait and mobility: NUSHU / NUSHU X.
Browse the full interactive database in the Wearables & Nearables Explorer to filter by company, product, category, form factor, product stage, market, biomarker group, signal, and geography.