Wearable Readiness Scores Lack Evidence: 389 Golfers Gained Just 0.5 Strokes
EricTopol · x · 2026-09-22
Cardiologist Eric Topol questions the scientific basis of HRV and Readiness scores pushed by Apple Watch and other wearables in his Ground Truths newsletter.
- On September 9, Apple announced a revamp of its Apple Watch health sensing system, rolling out a 0-10 Readiness score, increasing HRV output frequency 24-fold, and adding a longevity tab and "Health Age."
- More than 100 million US adults now use wearable sensors, and HRV/Readiness are marketed as markers of autonomic nervous system health, future disease, biological age, and even longevity — none of which has been proven.
- HRV is the millisecond variation between consecutive heartbeats (R-R intervals), reflecting sympathetic/parasympathetic interplay; it is only a rough proxy for autonomic activity and cannot determine whether a person's ANS function is abnormal.
- The best available study: among 389 pro golfers, an absolute 10-percentage-point increase in Recovery score was associated with only about 0.5 fewer strokes per round.
Bottom line: the health benefits claimed for wearable readiness scores remain unproven.
Related event: Eric Topol Questions Wearables' Readiness Scores(2 posts)→
More from Apps
- Pigment Agents now reads and posts in Slack, inheriting user permissions — mattturck · 2026-11-12
- Ditto launches swap-anything video tool to replace any video's main character — yoobinray · 2026-11-12
- Loom founder launches Roma 2.0, a shared to-do list that orchestrates AI agents — thetripathi58 · 2026-11-12
- AI pipeline turns a few product photos into a full video ad via storyboard-first workflow — jeffgrimes9 · 2026-11-12
- Pika Integrates Seedream 5.5: Split Images Into 100+ Layers for Precise Multi-Turn Edits — aziz4ai · 2026-11-12
- Llama app adds simultaneous voice, image and video input, running locally on LFM3-Omni — mervenoyann · 2026-11-12