The Rise of Wristwear: Why Wearables Are the Next Health Infrastructure

The 2023–2024 growth rate alone was +17.37%, making it one of the fastest-growing consumer tech segments globally.

But this isn’t just a wearables story—it’s a signal that health data has become infrastructure.

From Gadget to Ecosystem

The early pitch for wristwear was simple: track your steps, maybe improve your sleep. That’s evolved. Today, platforms like WHOOP, Oura, and Garmin aren’t competing for consumer wrist space—they’re becoming the data engines that power everything from performance optimization to insurance underwriting.

Take WHOOP: it’s used not just by individual athletes, but by entire pro teams, military units, and corporate wellness programs. Its data—HRV, recovery, strain, sleep—now guides training loads, travel schedules, and in some cases, contract negotiations. WHOOP CEO Will Ahmed has stated the goal isn’t fitness—it’s to “unlock human performance.”

And investors are paying attention. WHOOP has raised $400M+ to date, and the broader health wearables market is projected to surpass $170B by 2030, according to Precedence Research.

The Commercial Stakes of Self-Quantification

As wearables move beyond niche sports into broader healthcare and employer-funded wellness programs, they’re reshaping business models. Health insurers are piloting lower premiums for consistent biometric compliance. Employers are layering in wearables for productivity boosts and absenteeism reduction. Pro sports teams are embedding them into performance contracts.

Meanwhile, startups like GOLD Health, founded by Olympian-turned-entrepreneur Sky Christopherson, are commercializing hyper-personalized data stacks to extend longevity, reduce chronic disease risk, and quantify resilience. Christopherson’s original Optimized Athlete model helped the U.S. women's cycling team medal in London with no funding—just sensors and science.

The implications for real estate, training infrastructure, and health services are broad: gyms, stadiums, clinics, and even insurers will need to integrate wearable data into their operational flows—or risk becoming obsolete. The user is now the node, and the wrist is the port.

Where Infrastructure Meets Policy

This growth also raises regulatory and ethical questions. With 500M+ users by decade’s end, biometric data governance—who owns it, how it’s used, and whether it’s sold—is no longer theoretical. The convergence of wearables, AI, and insurance creates a future where lifestyle data could determine access, pricing, or even eligibility.

And governments are responding. The EU’s Digital Health Strategy and U.S. FDA frameworks are starting to define acceptable use cases for consumer health data, especially as devices enter clinical and therapeutic domains. The more wristwear replaces labwork, the more the line between consumer and medical-grade blurs.

Bottom Line

The hockey stick growth of wristwear isn’t just a tech success—it’s a structural shift in how health, performance, and risk are measured. Investors shouldn’t view wearables as hardware plays. They're now infrastructure assets, embedded across healthcare, sports, and workplace ecosystems. As adoption crosses the 500M mark, the real opportunity lies in who owns the data layer—and how they monetize the insights underneath.