Google has announced an AI-powered personal health coach to Fitbit tracking services, with plans to roll out a preview of the new functionality in October to premium subscribers who are using the latest Fitbit trackers, Fitbit smart watches and Pixel watches.
Built with Google’s AI tool, Gemini, the new personal health coach works as a fitness trainer, sleep coach and health and wellness advisor that can create a bespoke health plan based on goals set by the user. Additional functionality includes custom routines, where detailed workout suggestions and metrics help with weekly progression; real-time check-ins and adjustments to a workout based on lifestyle changes and daily insights; and personalised advice depending on how you’re feeling.
There are several updates around sleep analysis, with new algorithms designed to provide “a more precise understanding of your sleep duration and stages” and quality insights available to “improve your sleep” over time, aiming to create personalised sleep schedules. Google has also made changes based on “common user suggestions”, such as more intuitive ways to visualise data, easier layouts, improved syncing and dark mode.
Google notes the app itself has been entirely rebuilt with AI “at its core”, so that your Fitbit can better “understand your own personal goals, build your plan, contextualise your metrics and bring insights at the right moments”. According to Google, the health coach was made with input from “leading industry experts and through scientific research”, which includes partnering with the basketball player, Stephen Curry and his performance team as well as Google’s own Consumer Health Advisory Panel.
Fitbit Premium users within the US are being encouraged to sign up prior to the October launch date in order to access the preview, with Google explaining how it will help support this new development: “Building a health coach that works for everyone is a major task. We’re releasing this experience as a preview so you can help shape it as we make regular improvements.”
Google recently announced a partnership with the Institute of Women’s Cancers, with the aim to find ways in which AI tools can help “improve outcomes” for female patients with breast cancer and gynaecological cancers. In May of this year, they also launched a new open model for health app developers, described as its “most capable open model for multimodal medical text and image comprehension”, built on Gemma 3. Potential use cases included medical image classification, medical image interpretation, and medical text comprehension and clinical reasoning.
Health and care updates across major US tech companies
Microsoft launched Microsoft Dragon Copilot earlier in the year, an AI assistant for clinical workflow that brings together natural language voice dictation and ambient listening capabilities “with fine-tuned generative AI and healthcare-adapted safeguards”. The technology can be used to create clinical documentation, with Copilot capturing patient-clinician conversations and orders, converting them into “high quality, comprehensive, specialty-specific notes”.
Apple recently introduced a clinical-grade hearing aid feature for the AirPods Pro 2, building on its hearing test feature to offer an “end-to-end hearing health experience focused on prevention, awareness, and assistance”. It uses a “personalised hearing profile” generated from a five minute hearing test, to enable “personalised dynamic adjustments” to sounds around a user.
In February, Apple partnered with Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, to begin a major longitudinal study via its Research app to assess health data gained from Apple devices, as well as third-party tech. According to Apple, this will help them explore the ways in which different areas of health may connect, “such as mental health’s impact on heart rate, or how sleep can influence exercise”. They’ve also been looking at how this technology can be used to predict, detect, monitor, and manage any changes in health.
