Over time, features evolved with new iterations. The Apple Watch Series 4 introduced the ability to take an electrocardiogram (ECG) in 2018. But for the most part, the most common features still focused on monitoring and tracking wellness indicators.

But innovation doesn’t sit still. Whoop and Oura set new standards for ease of use, appealing form factors and interfaces to meet the needs of athletes and sleep-focused bio-hackers. Wearable monitors have gone from geeky to sexy, and wearing one is now a recognized personal branding symbol that says, “I care about my physical and emotional well-being.” The natural next step in well-tech is to complement tracking by adding technology that can actually affect how we feel.

The State Of Well-Tech Today

Now that we’re equipped with all this personal biometric data, the next instinct is to want to effect change and empower improvement. This is the driving force behind the current phase of well-tech, where new tools can actually help impact our health and well-being. New apps and wearables offer the ability to optimize your mood, improve your sleep or even improve your blood circulation. Sophisticated tools and technologies that have been tested and applied in adjacent fields for years are being adapted to be smaller, less expensive and more accessible for everyday, personal use.

What Is Bio-Streaming?

One such advancement in this phase is bio-streaming. Similar to how you stream music or movies through an app, bio-streaming lets you stream physical sensations. Cutting-edge technology emulates the effects of common compounds like caffeine and melatonin digitally and stimulates their impacts on your biometrics.

This has the potential to transform how we think of wellness technology, from measurement to action, and how we approach our everyday mental and physical well-being. It promises to lower our dependencies on ingestible substances, democratize anxiety and pain management and give us greater control over everything from how we sleep to how productive we are at work and play.

While still at the early stages of this shift, the commercially available solutions are effective and popular with a growing base of wellness wearables consumers. These solutions will only get more sophisticated and elegant as time goes on. But it’s already tipping the well-tech scales more toward greater personal control, and the future has become reality.

Predicting The Future Of Well-Tech

The leap to bio-streaming is huge, but don’t expect the innovation to stop there. Tech companies are already imagining the future of well-tech and engineering the solutions that will bring that future to life. So what’s next? Expect to see at least two more massive shifts in the category, which will bring us closer to a truly integrated experience.

Collaboration And Automation

Now that platforms and technology can both monitor and influence our wellness, the next stage would be to integrate those solutions. Then, devices could learn to recognize patterns and even anticipate our needs.

For example, a device that tracks your sleeping habits may notice you tossing and turning more than usual, then tell your bio-streaming app to send calming signals to your body so you can sleep more soundly. Technology could begin to self-regulate and automate the entire experience based on your real-time needs and preferences.

Whole-Health Integration

Finally, as the technology becomes more elegant and streamlined, we’ll see it move beyond wearables. You’ll be able to integrate it more naturally into your daily life with smart wellness technology built into mattresses, car seats, headphones, clothing and more.

To some, this may sound a bit science fiction, but most of the components are already here, waiting to be integrated into an end-to-end solution. The key will be cooperation between parties who bring elements of the solution together. Companies will need to put the power in consumers’ hands: Allow people to set their own goals, determine what data gets shared and, of course, start, stop or schedule the experience whenever they choose. Because after all, the whole mission of wellness technology is to provide a better alternative where people have access and are in control.