"fitness apps" articles

Parks Associates is supporting the 16th-annual  What's Next Boomer Business Summit . American Idol  meets aging tech entrepreneurs at The What’s Next Innovation Challenge , an event hosted by Mary Furlong & Associates and sponsored by AARP Innovation Labs during the What’s Next Boomer Business Summit held in New Orleans on April 18. Competition winners receive $10,000 in funding for their product or company and the opportunity to continue to the...

Parks Associates research finds that 75% of smart watch owners and 68% of fitness tracker owners are using their devices every day . How are consumers utilizing digital health applications? This new infographic below highlights the top 10 ways consumers use health apps the most, including tracking resting heart rates and consumed calories, setting exercise goals, and logging food and drink. Notably, almost half (48%) of daily app users utilize their health devices to track the...

Prior to the 5th-annual Connected Health Summit, hosted by Parks Associates, Geoff Gross, Founder & CEO, Medical Guardian, sat down with the firm's analyst team to discuss new cutting-edge innovations in the connected health market. Geoff will participate on the expert panel, Trackers, Wearables, and Smart Watches: Next Stage in Health Tech , during the pre-conference research workshop: Independent Living and Wellness: A Growing Opportunity on Wednesday, August 28, at 4:15...

If you spent any time in the Sands Convention Center—part of CES 2018’s Tech West exhibition—you couldn’t miss the explosion of companies offering sleep solutions this year. From startups to established companies like Philips and Nokia, everyone wants to capture a piece of this market. Form factors on display include smart mattresses, sensor strips that slip underneath sheets, smart pillows, smart sensors that clip on pillows, smart sensors that clip on clothes, bed-side...

Parks Associates recently published Smart Home, Caregiving, and Aging in Place , an analysis of existing and anticipated independent living needs among people age 50 and older. This was an exciting project to complete, given the significant demographic shifts that are currently occurring in the United States. The U.S. population is greying, which is a trend that will continue for decades, due in large part to the aging of the sizable Baby Boomer generation. The below chart...

Smart watch adoption is picking up in the United States. According to Parks Associates' most recent survey data, as of 2017 14% of U.S. broadband households own at least one smart watch. Consumer-reported purchase intention for smart watches has also more than doubled year-over-year, ahead of the holiday shopping season. 2017 is an important year for the U.S. smart watch market. Traditional fitness wearable brands Fitbit and Garmin have announced their first "true" smart...

One of the greatest turnaround stories in the digital health space in 2017 is WeightWatchers. The iconic brand, traditionally associated with in-person weight loss meetings and beautiful TV commercials boasting celebrity testimonies, suffered badly between 2013-2015 when fitness technology vendors like Fitbit lured away its young customers and new weight loss startups leveraging digital services and lower prices chipped away its core customer base. At one point in late 2015, many pundits...

Some of the most interesting news to come out of CES this year had to do with virtual reality. With the upcoming release of the Windows Holographic System and VR headsets for around $300, it seems like 2017 may be the year that VR goes mainstream. But what does this mean for fitness and healthcare? One example of what we can expect in terms of fitness is VirZOOM. The VirZOOM platform includes a stationary bicycle that works in combination with a VR headset and accompanying software...