Livongo adds compatibility with Apple Watch, Fitbit, other smartwatches

Dive Brief:

Chronic disease management startup Livongo announced Wednesday smartwatches from Apple, Fitbit, Samsung and other companies are now able to receive behavioral notifications via its mobile app.
The goal is to utilize step data to inform notifications aimed at pushing individuals managing a chronic disease such as diabetes to form healthy habits.
Livongo is readying for an initial public offering later this year, according to The Wall Street Journal. The company raised $105 million Series E funding round in April 2018 at a valuation of $800 million.

Dive Insight:

The smartwatch integration is the latest effort by Livongo to offer personalized recommendations to its users addressing nutrition, exercise and sleep in an attempt to improve health outcomes.

The company says individuals will be able to share step data with Livongo through the smartwatch integration, adding another data point to its artificial intelligence system used to provide health insights.

“As we continue to expand our applied health signals platform, we can use the integration to aggregate more important health data that we can then interpret to better understand the unique needs of our members,” Livongo Chief Product Officer Amar Kendale said in a statement.

Karl Poterack, Mayo Clinic's medical director of applied clinical informatics, has cautioned step data has limited ability to offer predictive clinical applications. He warned there has been inadequate high-quality research at HIMSS 2019, and cautioned doctors are concerned having access to increasing amounts of data may expose them to new legal liability.

"If you present this data and bring in your device and say 'here I have this heart rate data from the last month' we're going to say, 'that's great, but we don't know what it really means,'" Poterack said to a HIMSS panel eariler this year.

Livongo said interactive five day challenges delivered through the new notification features, such as walking daily or drinking water instead of soda, are designed to help individuals form better health habits.