AI is Changing Wearables in 2026(?) and Predicts 130 Diseases from Sleep! (Fit For Science Episode 8)

About this episode

Rob and Stephan evaluate current AI features in wearables, break down a revolutionary paper predicting diseases from a single night of sleep, and discuss the future of medical integration into wearables.

📝Summary

In this episode, biological data scientists Rob and Stephan critically assess the current use of AI in the wearable market, ranging from the practical limitations of Oura and Whoop coaches to the potential of Google’s Gemini and Withings’ biomarker-tracking devices. The central scientific discussion focuses on "SleepFM," a groundbreaking foundation model published in Nature Medicine that utilizes self-supervised learning on polysomnography data to predict over 130 diseases, biological age, and mortality risk from a single night of sleep with unprecedented accuracy. The hosts speculate on how this technology could bridge the gap between clinical sleep labs and consumer wearables, potentially transforming preventive medicine through longitudinal tracking and non-invasive sensors.

⏳Chapters

00:00:00 AI in wearables and their current capabilities

00:01:21 AI Coaches: Testing the limits of Oura, Whoop, and Garmin 

00:12:24 The Smart Toilet: Withings U-Scan and the value of waste biomarkers 

00:23:00 Environmental Health: PVC off-gassing and vinyl records 

00:28:15 Generative AI: ChatGPT Health and Claude for Life Sciences 

00:37:17 SleepFM: A multimodal sleep foundation model for disease prediction 

00:43:00 Self-Supervised Learning: How foundation models learn from sleep data 

00:51:00 Disease Prediction: Predicting 130 conditions with unseen accuracy

00:59:46 The Future: Translating clinical models to consumer wearables 

01:19:25 Community Feedback

📚Resources

Introducing Oura Advisor (not Coach)

WHOOP Coach Powered by OpenAI

Active Intelligence With Garmin Connect+

U-Scan Nutrio

News: Withings latest smart scale (‘longevity station’)

Withings Intelligence

Body Scan

Ketone bodies

Ketosis: Definition, Benefits & Side Effects

Keto Breath (“dragon breath”)

Air Quality Measurement Device

VINYL: Maybe it's time we had an intervention.

Introducing ChatGPT Health

Segment about AI in health(care)

Claude in healthcare and the life sciences

Clarification: Anthropic's product is called Claude with three differently sized models named Haiku, Sonnet, and Opus.

ICD-10 and ICD-11 Codes: International Classification of Diseases (ICD)

Understanding ICD-10 | Johns Hopkins Medicine

Healthcare Spending - Our World in Data

Federated learning

Swarm Learning

SleepFM - Nature Medicine paper

Code

Stanford Sleep Bench v1.0

Foundation model

Attention Is All You Need (Transformers)

Self-supervised learning

ImageNet

Fine-tuning

Reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF)

Polysomnography

Recurrent neural network (LSTM)

Long short-term memory (RNN)

C-index: Evaluating Survival Models

Best Wearables for Sleep: Scientific Rankings (2024-05)

Best Wearables for Sleep: Scientific Rankings (2025-10)

Philips Somnolyzer 24x7 for automated sleep staging

Whoop listened(?) and is looking for a VP for Foundation AI

AUROC of blood pressure to predict ASCVD ~0.80

Podcast Recommendation: Drug Story 

Atorvastatin (Lipitor)

Life expectancy: Netherlands (82.2) vs Austria (82.0)

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Illnesses (DSM-5)

Mechanism does not imply outcome. Outcome implies mechanism. - Layne Norton

No Biological Free Lunches

🎙️About

Fit For Science is a deep-dive podcast hosted by two biological data scientists, Rob and Stephan, exploring the intersection of research, health tech, and data-driven life>

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⚠️Disclaimer: This podcast represents our own opinions and is for informational purposes only. It does not constitute medical or financial advice or a professional relationship.