World Health Day — A word from our CEO

For more than a decade Withings has brought an ever-expanding range of cutting-edge devices and services to market. And for more than a decade, the Withings mission has remained clear: to help people better care for their health.

There’s no doubt that the Covid-19 pandemic put health in the spotlight, showed people how interconnected we are, and accelerated the adoption of health technology. 

For World Health Day, I want to take a moment to bring you inside our world, to hear about some of the things we are doing that go beyond what you might know, even if you are a long-term user of our products. 

Research & Outreach

WITHINGS is proud to to be involved with key stakeholders focused on improving global health, including leading universities, research institutes, and hospitals who are using WITHINGS devices to research pressing challenges: 

Hypertension is a global health problem, but among displaced peoples, how to manage it is far more difficult. Dr. Tala Al-Rousan from the University of California San Diego is conducting research with refugees using our cellular blood pressure monitors. This unique study is in its end phase and will help address populations that face issues such as interrupted healthcare access, economic hardship, and language barriers.

Another example of universities using WITHINGS to conduct health research entails work done on reaching Type 1 diabetes. Dr. Garrett Ash from Yale University School of Medicine studied the effectiveness of using social media versus other methods in reaching adults with Type 1 diabetes while using our smart scales to compare participant versus normative data.  

In addition to participation with higher education, WITHINGS continues to partner with governments in a shared mission of improving health for all citizens. For example, WITHINGS is working with the French government on an initiative called Mon espace santé where data from WITHINGS app can be synced with the national system enabling users who give their consent to have their digital health record accessible to doctors wherever they live. 

Charitable initiatives are also integral to our wider commitment to global health, which is why we believe in and contribute to organizations working on health education and interventions. Two examples of this are sponsorship of The American Heart Association’s “Life Is Why” campaign to our devices being used by The Women’s Cardiovascular Healthcare Foundation on an outreach tour designed to help disadvantaged women take care of their cardiovascular health. 

Connecting Health

Finally, extending connected health to people who have been traditionally unable to access this technology is a primary WITHINGS goal. In the U.S. with 15% of households lacking internet, we believe our rollout of cellular device capabilities exclusively for health professionals is bridging the care gap and materially addressing the limits of connected health. Paving a way for patient metrics to be sent automatically to healthcare teams means that providers can dynamically respond to patient needs. 

The initiatives cited above are just the tip of the iceberg, and we have many more studies and programs in progress. As we are in this to improve health today and every day, we will not stop pursuing innovations that serve this goal—for our individual users and for better global outcomes, because we’re all connected in health. 

Mathieu Letombe, CEO Withings