With thousands of products on display at CES 2025, it can be challenging to separate the true game-changers from the flashy fly-by-nights.
To help unmask true innovators, this Medtech Insight reporter accompanied Deloitte Consulting partner, Neal Batra, and Deloitte Consulting principal, Andrew Davis, into the buzzing digital health exhibit halls at the Venetian to highlight rising trends, trend-setters and solutions that are poised to transform the health care of tomorrow. None of the companies discussed by Batra and Davis are their clients.
While AI continued to dominate much of the conversation at CES, this year’s digital health landscape felt different from the previous year where data was omnipresent, but without offering consumers much insight.
“This was probably the first year where I think we’ve seen organizations providing insights on top of the data,” Davis noted. “Before, it was like, ‘I can generate the data [but without providing actionable insights].’”
This year, many of the products on display offered real-time analysis and real-time feedback, including evaluating risk of diseases and early disease detection, to help consumers manage their health.
Among them were several smart rings. French smart ring maker Circular unveiled its Circular Ring 2, which measures heart rate variability, sleep stages, blood oxygen levels, activity and includes electroencephalography (EEG). It also features a US Food and Drug Administration-cleared atrial fibrillation detection system for improved health tracking. The smart ring is expected to go on sale in February or March at a price tag of $380.
Withings showcased a smart mirror concept called Omnia that can measure and display health metrics and offers feedback using an AI voice assistant. The company said on its website it envisions a future where “Omnia serves as the ultimate health hub, seamlessly measuring and gathering data from the extensive Withings ecosystem, which includes connected devices such as smart scales, blood pressure monitors, and sleep analyzers.”
By integrating third-party applications and tools, Omnia said it “consolidates all your health metrics in one place.”
San Francisco-based start-up Augmental demoed MouthPad, a wearable “mouthpiece” designed to help people living with motor impairment and limited hand function move a computer cursor or swipe on their phone, simply by moving their tongue across the MouthPad.
In a promotional video, several people with spinal cord injuries detail how the MouthPad has helped them interact with computers and smart devices. Augmental co-founder Tomas Vegas said in the video that he was “interested in using technology in order to overcome all limitations.”
Co-founder Corten Singer likens the tongue to the “eleventh finger” because it has the unique ability to be nimble and dexterous. The MouthPad rests on the top of the mouth and has built-in sensors that allow users to use their tongue as they would a finger to interact with a track pad, control a cursor and activate clicks.
Miniaturization
More players in the wearable space are also focusing their efforts on miniaturization. This year, several companies showcased earbuds that go beyond listening to music or even helping people with mild-to-moderate hearing loss. These earbuds listen to your heart – literally.
MindMics said their earbuds capture every heartbeat and measure heart variability (HRV) and other health metrics in real time through in-ear infrasonic health monitoring. CEO Anna Barnacka, a former NASA Einstein Fellow at Harvard University, explained on the company’s website that she started MindMics in 2018 to find a new way of monitoring health.
The Cambridge, MA-based firm is looking for partners to leverage its technology. Deloitte consultant Davis noted that the search for partners is a rising trend in digital health that health care incumbents, such as medical device companies, should pay attention to.
“We’re telling our clients [to] embrace the fact that this technology exists,” Davis said.
Batra added that MindMics and others in the earbud space that used to be considered consumer-facing devices are increasingly making strides to pursue the regulatory pathway.
Another company exhibiting at CES 2025, Mountain View, CA-based NextSense, launched consumer smart earbuds called Tone Buds, which are designed to improve sleep quality and optimize brain health. Tone Buds monitor brain activity during sleep and provide pink noise stimulation during deep sleep to promote restoration, the company said.
Batra pointed out that this technology, like many others seen at CES, empowers consumers to take their health into their own hands without going to a clinic or seeing a clinician first.
“It’s a great example from [getting] just insights about the body – which this show seems to have been about in the last couple of years when it comes to health – to converting that insight into actual action that has a positive health effect on you,” Batra explained. “I think the earbud becomes a convergence play for lots of capabilities, not just music.”
Hyper-Segmentation
Women’s Health
Batra and Davis also see more “hyper-segmentation” in the space where companies are catering to specific demographics and groups, such as women’s health, employer-based solutions, and the elderly.
The women’s health category keeps evolving and targeting an unmet need to provide solutions for women in perimenopause, menopause and post-menopause.
One of those innovators is Irish start-up Identify.her, which showcased their wearable device Peri, specifically designed to track perimenopausal symptoms and provide actionable insights.
Embr Labs showcased its Embr Wave 2 wristband to help women in menopause get immediate relief from temperature discomfort, such as hot flashes. The company claims the wristband also helps improves sleep and with other health issues.
Smart clothing for monitoring or detecting health problems are also gaining traction. At CES, French company DTF medical showcased a smart bra to “make breast cancer prevention easier.” Others are working on similar concepts.
In 2023, MIT researchers designed a wearable ultrasound device they hope will allow early detection of tumors, in particular, for patients at high risk of developing breast cancer in between routine mammograms.
Employer-Based Solutions
The Deloitte analysts noted that employers are also increasingly looking at digital health solutions that can keep their workforce healthier, and therefore, more productive.
“[Employers] get the disproportionate benefit if they can keep you healthier,” Batra said.
Swiss digital health company Nutrix, which received the CES Innovation Award 2025, unveiled its latest solution, a non-invasive stress-monitoring sensor that the company says provides medical-grade cortisol levels at home.
Nutrix says that in the US alone, workplace stress accounts for about $190bn in annual health care costs, while stress-related job burnout contributes up to $300bn annually in absenteeism, reduced productivity and health care expenses. By taking four measurements a day with the saliva test, users can track their “cortisol curve” to help identify risk for burnout, chronic stress and other health conditions, said Maria Hahn, CEO and founder of Nutrix.
CortiSense is integrated with Nutrix’s gSense Healthcare System platform to help companies look after their employees’ mental health with solid data, Hahn said. gSense is a digital platform that integrates and tracks a range of health metrics.
AgeTech
This year’s AARP 13,000-square-foot booth featured various start-ups focusing on solutions for caregiving, mobility and staying active, brain health, and social engagement such as companion robots to help with loneliness, as well as other smart devices to help the elderly age in their homes for longer.
An innovative smart toilet solution, Starling Medical, showcased its at-home urine diagnostic patient-monitoring device called UrinDx that monitors aspects of health every time someone uses the toilet. The company partnered with providers to connect patients to clinical care.
Clinical Data Versus Directional Data
Batra noted that physicians often are skeptical of devices that aren’t clinical grade and get overwhelmed in trying to make sense of data coming from wearables and similar sensors. However, both Batra and Davis agreed that more clinicians are starting to be more “receptive” to using directional data, or data that shows a general trend but may not be 100% accurate, to help solve clinical problems.
“Our observation, though, is that clinical data is not the only data that has value. Directional data has value, it’s just that physicians aren’t trained on that and are not taught to value it that much,” Batra said.
Batra also noted that more digital health companies are developing products with a regulatory pathway in mind, which he says is a shift from a few years ago when companies seemed more divided in terms of going direct to consumer versus pursuing regulatory clearance.
Key Takeaways
- Digital health products now offer real-time analysis and early disease detection, empowering consumers to manage their health independently.
- Miniaturized devices like smart rings, earbuds, and mouth-controlled tech blend convenience with advanced health monitoring.
- Hyper-segmented innovations for women’s health, employer wellness, and AgeTech are disrupting traditional healthcare models with direct-to-consumer data flows.
“It was 50/50 [a few years ago] and our reaction was actually, ‘We think more of you should be going through the unregulated consumer path,’” Batra said. “This year, we’re seeing more of a 70/30 split back to the regulated path.”
He concluded that this development could be the result of an evolved ecosystem where directional data is both more valuable for consumers and easier to absorb for clinicians.
With rising competition among consumer digital health companies offering wearables in various formats – rings, watches, earbuds, headsets – Batra expects that eventually there will be few winners in each category.
But the broader point is that consumer health information is increasingly flowing directly to consumers and not through the traditional clinician provider system, he noted. This will also likely disrupt the classic medtech B2B2C model. Some medtech companies, such as diabetes firms Abbott and Dexcom, are already appealing to healthy people by offering continuous glucose monitoring products with key insights into their overall health and metabolic activity.
Tokyo-based Kirin Holding’s Electric Salt Spoon, which enhances the salty and umami taste of low-sodium foods with the power of electricity, is an example of a non-pharmaceutical approach to what has been a classic issue around high blood pressure and salt, according to Batra.
“It’s interesting technology, because it’s giving you a path to a solution that’s not been considered, so if you’re a high blood pressure medicine company, this is a potential risk for you,” he said.
The company says the spoon uses a weak electric current to concentrate sodium ion molecules in food, adding a strong umami and salty flavor to low-sodium foods. The company plans a limited online sale of 200 units in May at a price tag of about $127.
As technology continues to bridge the gap between clinical grade and consumer-friendly devices, it seems that both precise data and directional data hold great potential for the future. It will be interesting to see if consumers and clinicians will come to a shared understanding about the value of these innovations.
“And in some ways, the trend is working both ways and what it’s doing is activating and informing and educating the consumer and clinicians that there’s value in this mix,” said Batra.