Fitbit is making a move to become more than just a fitness device at a time when wearable competition is fierce.
The company on Wednesday announced the launch of Fitbit Care, a health platform that combines coaching, virtual care, wearable devices, and self-tracking.
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Here's how Fitbit Care works: The platform encompasses Fitbit's wearable band, which tracks sleep habits, activity, heart rate, and female health. Then, through a new Fitbit Plus app used on a smartphone users can get health coaching sessions and virtual care to help them reach a particular health goal, such as lowering blood pressure.
For now, the program is just for people whose employers, health plans, or health systems opt into it and pay Fitbit on a per member per month basis. That means individual people can't sign up to use the program on their own, at least for now.
"With healthcare costs and rates of chronic disease increasing, there is a clear need for innovative tools and services to help people make the lifestyle and behavior changes necessary to reverse this trend,” Adam Pellegrini, the general manager of Fitbit Health Solutions, said in a news release.
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