The future of healthcare: WHOOP’s medical and AI innovations

For years, wearables were seen as tools for tracking steps, heart rate, or calories. Today, they’re reshaping healthcare itself. In a recent Walker Webcast conversation, WHOOP founder and CEO Will Ahmed shared how the company is bridging the gap between consumer wellness and clinical medicine with medical-grade technology, AI-driven coaching, and a bold vision for the future of healthcare.

Bringing the doctor’s office to your wrist

Ahmed explained that WHOOP’s mission has evolved from simply “unlocking human performance” to extending healthspan, helping people live longer, healthier lives. Central to this evolution is embedding medical capabilities into a non-invasive, continuous form factor.

The latest WHOOP devices include:

• ECG monitoring and AFib detection features cleared by the FDA.
• Blood pressure insights, developed after years of research, to estimate daily blood pressure from the wrist.
• Advanced sleep monitoring, adapted from the gold-standard PSG machine into a seamless wearable.

These advances mean members may no longer need to visit a clinic for snapshots of their health. Instead, WHOOP offers round-the-clock monitoring, surfacing early warning signs and actionable insights long before a crisis occurs.

“Virtually everything you see in a doctor’s office, we’re trying to do non-invasively and continuously,” Ahmed said.

AI as a personal health coach

Collecting data is one thing; making sense of it is another. WHOOP captures nearly 100MB of biometric data per user per day, ranging from heart rate variability to strain and sleep staging.

That dataset powers AI coaching, a 24/7, built-in guide that interprets data and suggests personalized next steps. Whether it’s recovery recommendations, sleep adjustments, or hydration reminders, the AI acts as a “doctor, trainer, and nutritionist” rolled into one.

As Ahmed put it: “If you’re going to tell someone something’s not good, you also want to tell them how to fix it.”

The AI component ensures WHOOP flags issues and equips members with practical solutions, helping turn awareness into meaningful lifestyle changes.

Expanding the healthcare conversation

Wearables like WHOOP are blurring the line between consumer wellness products and traditional healthcare systems. Ahmed sees this as a fundamental shift:

• From reactive to proactive care: Rather than waiting for illness, users can track health metrics continuously and catch early indicators of illness.
• From sick care to true healthcare: Data-driven insights help people stay healthy, not just manage illness.
• From episodic checkups to daily monitoring: Doctors can review longitudinal data, making conversations far more precise and informed.

Ahmed even envisions a future where wearables influence insurance models, rewarding healthier lifestyles with better coverage options. The end goal is ambitious: to add a billion healthy years to society.

What’s next: non-invasive glucose monitoring

One of the most exciting frontiers is non-invasive glucose monitoring, a breakthrough that could transform diabetes management. While millions of Americans should be using continuous glucose monitors (CGMs), only a fraction do, often due to the invasive form factor.

WHOOP is investing heavily in solving this challenge. “There are problems at every layer of current CGM technology—the hardware, the software, and the analysis,” Ahmed said. Cracking non-invasive glucose measurement would bring millions more people into proactive health tracking.

Beyond medicine: sports, family, and society

WHOOP’s medical evolution has broad cultural implications:

• Sports and entertainment: Imagine watching golf or basketball with live heart rates and recovery scores integrated into broadcasts, bringing fans closer to the action.
• Family health: Parents can monitor their children’s well-being or even detect warning signs of conditions like AFib through shared data groups.
• Societal insights: From alcohol consumption trends to stress spikes on election night, WHOOP data reveals fascinating behavioral patterns at scale.

These applications show WHOOP’s potential to personalize health and enrich how we understand communities, entertainment, and culture.

A new vision of healthcare

The traditional healthcare system is built on periodic check-ins, reactive treatment, and “sick care.” WHOOP is part of a new paradigm that puts control back in the hands of individuals with continuous, predictive, AI-driven monitoring.

For Ahmed, the vision is clear: “Everyone senses that the relationship they have with a doctor is going to change. WHOOP is building toward being that first line of health monitoring—proactive, transparent, and consumer-facing.”

As wearables move from counting steps to preventing strokes, the future of healthcare may very well begin on your wrist. Learn more by tuning into this fascinating Walker Webcast.