Key Takeaways:
- Wearables provide 24/7 health insights beyond clinical snapshots.
- Thryve unifies 500+ devices via a single compliant API.
- Actionable insights drive outcomes across care, insurers, and studies.
- Integration complexity and device variety remain major challenges.
- Standardized, ISO-certified data reduces risk and scales solutions.
- Continuous tracking boosts engagement, retention, and personalized interventions.
How is wearable and sensor data shaping innovation in HealthTech today?
Friedrich: I believe it’s the main driver of healthcare innovation because it fundamentally changes what we know about people’s health, how diseases progress, and how treatments work. Previously, healthcare was largely limited to clinical settings. We relied on snapshots: lab results, pulse readings, blood pressure measurements taken at a single point in time. Today, we can understand 24/7 determinants of individual health.
This shift has been enabled by extraordinary technological progress. Companies like Apple, Google, Fitbit, and Huawei have driven innovation that was once confined to traditional medical device manufacturers such as Medtronic and B. Braun.
Continuous data allows us to move away from reactive, pay-for-treatment models toward systems focused on keeping people healthy. Operationally, it enables healthcare to become more efficient, engaging, and enabling personalized care, wellness programs, digital therapeutics, and hospital or insurance offerings to individuals. Wearable and sensor data are now the key tools for meaningful interaction, making services more relevant, engaging, and valuable for end users.
How does Thryve help companies interpret and make actionable use of wearable and sensor data?
Friedrich: Thryve is Europe’s leading health data platform, enabling companies to access, harmonize, and interpret data from 500+ wearables through a single, compliant API, keeping all different data streams organized and flowing reliably into the respective health service. We handle the challenge of integrating a wide range of technologies and semantics while preserving insights. The goal is to make it easier for our customers to understand an individual’s health status and risks and to receive that data efficiently. Our plug-and-play API allows companies to integrate wearable data quickly without building and maintaining multiple device integrations.
All data comes in a standardized, validated, and analysis-ready format. We continuously cover new devices, manufacturers, and data types as they appear weekly, monthly, or whenever needed. This includes holistic sources like smartphone-based camera readings or Bluetooth connections to glucose meters, blood pressure monitors, and similar devices.
Thryve future-proof, plug-and-play solution brings together all the health metrics people generate at home into one reliable platform, making it easy for companies to turn data into actionable insights.
How is Thryve being used across healthcare?
Friedrich: It’s an epochal shift within healthcare, much like what’s happened in other industries where physical service delivery has been detached from the way people actually receive it, such as in shopping, banking, social networking.
The same is happening in healthcare across all verticals. Hospitals use telemedicine and remote patient monitoring, ingesting wearable and sensor data for faster intake, quicker discharge, and better outcomes. Digital therapeutics provide 24/7 digital health services. Insurers create individualized prevention and health stabilization programs, enabling a shift from reactive claims management to proactive underwriting, prevention, and engagement strategies. Device manufacturers are moving from creating a device to delivering a service, for example, helping to keep blood pressure in check over time. Overall, digital, anytime-anywhere healthcare is happening across all verticals. 24/7 health metrics empower them all, at different speeds and geographies but Thryve powers use cases basically in all these verticals across the globe.
What are the biggest challenges companies face when integrating wearables into their products or studies?
Friedrich: Integration is a huge technical lift. Each manufacturer has its own SDKs, integrations, data structures, API limits, timeframes, and authorization mechanisms. Companies often try to do it themselves, only to realize it’s extremely complex. So, they sometimes give up and return a year later, recognizing device and data integration isn’t their core value proposition.
That’s where Thryve comes in. Our value isn’t just integration - it’s making sense of the data. Understanding what datasets mean for treating cardiovascular disease, obesity, neurological conditions, and more. We provide a single, reliable data stream, standardized and ISO-certified for quality and security. Even Class II and III medical devices can leverage these datasets. Thryve offers a one-stop solution for both technical integration and actionable insights.
R2GConnect: Turning overwhelming health data into actionable insights is the central challenge. Friedrich: Exactly. No doctor can process 10,000 data points a day. This is where organizations building digital health expertise gain a competitive edge. Out of all that data, what truly matters? What’s the key explanatory factor for a heart failure program, an obesity program, or an insomnia program?
Thryve helps unlock that “piece of gold,” turning overwhelming data into actionable, meaningful insights - the real value proposition and intellectual property startups and scaleups need.
In what ways can wearable data strengthen clinical studies or support real-world evidence collection?
Friedrich: Continuous data reveals patterns hidden in snapshots. For example, people often have higher blood pressure at the doctor than at home (“white coat syndrome”). Wearable data allows trials to detect or predict deteriorations earlier.
A striking example is the German CDC at the start of COVID. They had little insight into spread or infection status. By leveraging wearable data, they gained early clues on trends and case status, which became one of four key metrics guiding national pandemic decisions. This shows how powerful 24/7 wearable data can be for clinical and real-world evidence collection.
How has working with Thryve improved data quality, insights, or study results?
Friedrich: Beyond clinical trials, we have more than a dozen ongoing studies powered by Thryve. For example, we were the first to create a mental health marker capable of identifying the risk of mental health challenges based entirely on wearables and sensor data, in collaboration with a university here in Berlin.
We also see strong engagement and retention improvements with insurance clients. People regularly engaged with positive interactions are 80% less likely to change membership. Digital health apps, where behavior change is key, can see up to 100% more engagement and retention with continuous tracking. Lifestyle-driven non-communicable diseases benefit the most: tracking metrics enables individual interventions, driving outcomes and supporting financial sustainability for digital therapeutics.
Globally, we serve 30 countries and over 2 million end users, with a strong uptick in wearable utilization. Regulatory developments like FDA clearance and outcome-based payment guidelines accelerate this trend. By 2030, wearables will be a core pillar of healthcare, and companies need to prepare now.
What advice would you give to startups or scaleups looking to leverage wearable data effectively?
Friedrich: Start with your goal. If you want to help people with obesity or diabetes achieve better outcomes, identify what signals matter and how wearables can inform interventions. Focus on learning from early data, adjusting accordingly. The real value is in the intellectual property you build: knowing how interventions affect outcomes. This understanding is critical and a key success factor for the healthcare system.
What should health tech companies know when working with Thryve?
Friedrich: Two things: focus on your core value proposition and let someone else handle what isn’t your specialty. Second, Thryve is hyper-compliant. ISO 27001 and ISO 9001-certified, fully European data-hosted, and audited annually, we ensure startups meet all regulatory and insurance requirements. Working with Thryve removes that burden so companies can innovate safely.
R2GConnect: Thank you very much for your insights, Friedrich.
See How Wearable Data Can Accelerate Your Innovation Take advantage of Thryve’s complimentary sessions and trial access to explore API integration, analytics, and clinical study tools, designed to help you build smarter, data-driven health solutions, accelerate product development, improve study outcomes, and unlock real-world health insights.
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