Webinar Recap: How Wearable Data Is Powering the Next Generation of Digital Experiences

In our latest webinar, Delighting Users with Their Own Data: How Product Teams Transform Wearable Insights into Breakthrough Experiences, Jordan Bowlus, Frank Rydzewski, and Toni Connelly unpacked one of the biggest opportunities in digital health and wellness today: turning everyday wearable data into meaningful, personalized experiences that users actually value.

Across healthcare, wellness, fitness, retail, and even financial services, organizations are recognizing the same truth: users are already generating rich health data — and products that can harness this data can create far more compelling experiences than those that can’t.

“Your users are already capturing this data. The question is whether organizations are leaving that data on the cutting-room floor.”

Here are the major insights and takeaways from the conversation.

Why Now? Three Trends Converging

Wearables are fully mainstream.

More than a billion connected health devices are now in use globally, generating continuous streams of sleep, movement, heart rate, stress, and metabolic data.

User expectations have changed.

People want personalized experiences that reflect their daily reality, not generic push notifications or one-size-fits-all journeys.

“Users expect the products they use to recognize and respond to their data.” – Jordan Bowlus

Differentiation is harder than ever.

Products built around real user data can deliver moments of delight and loyalty that competitors can’t easily replicate.

Holistic Health Data: Beyond Step Counts

Understanding users begins with listening, and in digital products, listening requires data.

“Step counts are really just the tip of the iceberg.” – Toni Connelly

Historically, many teams focused on simple metrics because they were easy to capture. However, true personalization requires a broader perspective. Full, ‘whole-person health' encompasses:

• Lifestyle factors

• Clinical measurements

• Sleep patterns

• Dietary habits

• Daily routines

• Stress and recovery indicators

This richer picture enables product teams to move from simple tracking to meaningful insights and proactive guidance.

But there’s a catch: the data landscape is chaotic.

“Capturing that much data is difficult because the landscape in the market is chaotic. And we know this because we’ve been here since the beginning.” – Toni Connelly

Why a Health IoT Platform Is Essential

To address this fragmentation, Validic evolved from early activity-tracking integrations to a platform built for clinical-grade devices, home health sensors, and advanced wearables.

Validic Inform is the foundation that lets teams:

• Connect to 600+ devices with a single API

• Normalize messy, inconsistent data

• Maintain secure, de-identified storage

• Deploy experiences in weeks, not months

• Focus on building value instead of managing integrations

Context Is King: Turning Noise Into Meaning

Once the plumbing is in place, the real opportunity begins. As Frank Rydzewski emphasized, users don’t want more numbers — they want guidance. Today, users are drowning in data. They’re starving for guidance, and they expect technology to anticipate their needs, just like a map app that reroutes before you hit traffic.

Contextual intelligence can elevate everyday user interactions by:

These moments build trust and reinforce that the product “knows” the user.

Making Intelligence Easy: Introducing Validic Sparks

Validic Sparks is our new generative AI-powered insights engine embedded directly into the Inform platform.

Sparks allows teams to:

• Write prompts that reflect their brand and voice

• Inject user data automatically into AI workflows

• Generate structured, personalized insights at scale

• Combine wearable data with custom fields (like preferences or goals)

The result: teams can instantly create compelling, human-feeling messages, nudges, recommendations, and insights without building complex models from scratch.

Where Product Teams Should Start

Throughout the webinar, a consistent theme emerged: you don’t have to boil the ocean.
Start with the metrics that matter most.

Sleep, for example, is universally relevant and highly predictive of readiness, stress, and performance. Then focus on what behaviors, outcomes, or moments of delight you want to create — and design your data strategy to support those moments.

Final Takeaway: Don’t Leave Data on the Table

Your users are already capturing this data. The question is whether organizations are leaving that data on the cutting-room floor. With the right infrastructure and approach, product teams can turn disconnected data into differentiated experiences — and do it with speed, scale, and confidence.

Watch the Recording + Explore Validic

If you missed the live conversation, you can watch the full recording and explore how Validic enables organizations to:

• Connect to hundreds of wearables and health devices

• Build next-gen personalized experiences

• Leverage contextual intelligence and AI

• Launch features quickly with minimal engineering lift

Whether you’re building in healthcare, wellness, fitness, or a completely new category, our team would love to help you explore what’s possible.