Diabetes Patients to Benefit from New Collaboration: Lifescan and Fitbit

The original, clip-on Fitbit tracker, released in 2009, brought the idea of consumer wearables that track personal wellness to the mass market. Fitbit cemented its status as a visionary leader in this new industry when the company introduced an integrated user website and mobile app in 2014. The Fitbit platform gave the average consumer a revolutionary way to track personal health data and easy access to meaningful insights regarding their own wellness and exercise performance.

In February 2021, Fitbit officially expanded into the health wearable space by adding blood glucose tracking to the Fitbit app; the new feature included an option to import blood glucose data directly from LifeScan’s OneTouch diabetes monitoring system. This month, LifeScan, a company that pioneered personal blood glucose monitoring technology in the early 1990s, and Fitbit announced a multi-year collaboration to provide more comprehensive diabetes management tools through deeper integration between their products.

LifeScan’s cloud-based digital platform offers data, insights, and connectivity with clinicians to people managing diabetes via the OneTouch Reveal app. The new collaboration will provide a Fitbit Inspire 2 tracker and access to the Fitbit Premium service to LifeScan users at no extra charge.

Fitbit premium includes a dashboard with a broad range of personalized biometric data insights, guided wellness programs, prerecorded workouts, and tools that help users develop healthy lifestyle choices, stay motivated, and practice mindfulness. Combining the capabilities of Fitbit and OneTouch can give users a better understanding of how daily activity, sleep, and nutrition impact blood sugar, leading to improved glucose management and overall wellness.

The collaborative solution becomes available to consumers beginning in the fall of 2021. Healthcare plans and providers will be able to offer the integrated technologies as a reimbursed adjudicated option early next year. Approaching the collaboration as a consumer tool rather than a supervised treatment protocol is a smart move, as it directly empowers individuals living with diabetes to make informed decisions about their personal health. And the merging of the programs could result in a larger subscriber base for both services.