DIY Health and Wellness

1ST YEAR ON THE LIST

Zoe uses continuous glucose monitor data to understand how individuals respond to various foods.

KEY INSIGHT

Wellness is a top priority for consumers. The market is growing with advances in affordable athome genetic testing and diagnostics that analyze our microbiomes and blood levels for insights.

EXAMPLES

Humanity, backed by $5 million from investors, aims to slow aging. The app’s algorithms use data from smartphones and wearables to calculate your rate of aging and recommend changes to extend your lifespan. Personalized nutrition startup Zoe claims to learn how participants’ bodies respond to different foods based on results from a home testing kit that analyzes microbiome and blood biomarker changes. Menlo Park, California–based January offers subscriptions for personalized nutrition advice based on findings from heart rate and continuous glucose monitoring. Beyond the gut, cosmetic brands like Dr. Elsa Jungman provide product recommendations based on swabs of your skin microbiome. Targeting athletes, PNOE analyzes biomarkers in the breath to measure fitness and metabolism with “clinical-grade accuracy.”

DISRUPTIVE IMPACT

While consumer wellness technology expands, much of the science lags. The National Institutes of Health is investing $160 million in precision nutrition. Its program will study interactions between diet, gut microbiome, genes, and metabolism, to generate a significant dataset that could provide supporting evidence or disprove health claims in this emerging industry. Studies like this may also lead to calls for stricter regulation. In the U.K., the country’s Science and Technology Committee has already urged greater regulation of direct-to-consumer genetic testing and premarket assessments of each test’s clinical performance against its claims.

EMERGING PLAYERS

• Humanity • Zoe • January AI • Gainful • Sanome • Viome • DayTwo • Evvy • Ultrahuman