Whoop’s Blood Testing Feature Is Now Live, and I’m Skeptical.
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Fitness tracking has come a long way from simply counting steps. Today, Whoop, a maker of performance-enhancing wearables, officially launched Advanced Labs, a new feature that connects blood test results to the company’s continuous health monitoring platform. Whoop Advanced Labs has partnered with Quest Diagnostics, joining the growing trend of wearables becoming comprehensive and all-in-one health tracking platforms. The launch comes after over 350,000 users joined the waitlist following the feature’s preview in May, demonstrating strong interest in this new level of integrated health tracking.
How Whoop will track blood tests
Whoop Advanced Labs is designed to analyze biomarkers covering metabolism, hormones, inflammation, cardiovascular health, and nutrient levels—data that goes far beyond what can be obtained with wearable sensors alone. “At Whoop, we strive to provide our members with the most comprehensive picture of their health and performance,” said John Sullivan , Whoop’s chief marketing officer.
The idea is that Whoop subscribers will have access to the types of clinical tests that doctors (such as those from Quest Diagnostics) prescribe to help patients. Here are two ways subscribers can use blood test results to track their fitness:
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Upload your existing blood tests. Now participants can upload results from any lab directly to the Whoop app at no additional cost. This allows you to centralize all your results, track long-term trends, and compare your blood test results with sleep, exercise, recovery, and lifestyle data.
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Schedule a comprehensive screening through the Whoop app. Whoop Advanced Labs subscribers can schedule comprehensive blood tests directly through the app. Results are automatically synced to the Whoops app and reviewed by a physician providing expert advice. Subscription options include one test for $199, two tests per year for $349, or four tests per year for $599. Additional tests are available at reduced prices.
For reference: a third-party service provider will review test requests, administer them, provide results through the Whoop app, and provide phone consultations upon request. All tests are reviewed and administered by a licensed medical facility.
Do you really need to keep track of everything?
Again, Whoop isn’t the first wearable company to move in this direction. Ultrahuman, maker of the Ring AIR smart ring , launched its Blood Vision feature earlier this year.
This feature could help people identify health issues early and take preventative measures to address them. However, it also raises questions about whether consumers really need this level of health monitoring from commercial healthcare providers.
In my view, all of this points to a kind of “medicalization” of everyday well-being. While access to medical data can be inspiring, it can also be anxiety-provoking and encourage people to over-monitor aspects of their health that may not require constant attention. After all, blood biomarkers can fluctuate for many reasons , and abnormal results don’t always indicate health problems.
A look into the future
With the launch of this feature, anyone interested in Whoop’s integration with blood testing can join Advanced Labs’ waitlist . Whether you’ll truly want to know everything your blood is likely revealing is another matter. Rumor has it that the company’s current user base is already skewed toward serious athletes and health-optimizing individuals—in other words, those interested in comprehensive biomarker tracking. For now, I’m buckled up and watching the lines between fitness tracker and medical device continue to blur.