Among 80 wearable members stratified into quartiles of attainment of combined physical-activity and sleep recommendations, higher attainment showed age-adjusted associations with lower resting heart rate and BMI and higher heart rate variability, and the lowest-attainment quartile incurred approximately 12-fold higher annual per-member health care spending than the other quartiles.
Higher attainment of combined wearable-derived physical activity and sleep recommendations was associated with a more favorable cardiometabolic profile, specifically lower resting heart rate and BMI and higher heart rate variability.
The lowest-attainment quartile had approximately 12-fold higher annual per-member health care spending than the other quartiles.
The study showed that wearable-derived behavior data, cardiometabolic biomarkers, and employer health care claims can be linked within a single analysis.
This small feasibility study looked at 80 people who wore fitness and sleep trackers. Researchers grouped them into four equal-sized groups based on how well they met recommendations for both physical activity and sleep. People who met the recommendations more often tended to have a lower resting heart rate, a lower BMI, and higher heart rate variability (a marker often linked to heart and nervous-system health), after accounting for age. The researchers also linked the wearable data to employer health care claims. The group that met the recommendations least often had about 12 times higher yearly health care spending per person than the other three groups. This suggests that wearable-tracked sleep and activity habits might be connected to both health markers and health care costs. The study was small and was designed mainly to test whether these data sources can be combined, so it cannot show that better sleep and activity habits cause lower costs or better health. Larger studies would be needed to confirm the patterns.
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Upload Your LabsGrosicki G, von Hippel W, Fielding F, Holden L, Cheung C, Cohen J, et al.. (2026). Linking Attainment of Wearable-Derived Sleep and Physical Activity Recommendations with Cardiometabolic Biomarkers and Employer Health Care Claims: A Feasibility Study.. JMIR formative research. https://doi.org/10.2196/109259