The fitness and wellness industry is sitting on a gold mine of health information, but at the Connected Health & Fitness Summit, the people tasked with doing something about it admit that the while opportunity is massive, so is the work ahead
The fitness and wellness industry has never had more data. Figuring out what to do with it as the technology evolves is the challenge.
That was the overarching theme at the 2026 Connected Health & Fitness Summit’s “Health 4.0 – Bringing the Data Together” panel, where moderator Eric Malzone opened with an eye-watering stat: 230 million people ask ChatGPT health and wellness questions every week.
“The consumer is ready,” he said. “Is the industry?”
The four-person panel — Jarett Smith, vice president of digital, data and retail at 24 Hour Fitness; Mark Williams, digital director at David Lloyd Clubs; Omid Mashhadi, head of product partnerships at Google/Fitbit; and Andy Beckman, director at Garmin — spent the session answering that question with a mix of ambition and a willingness to admit they’re all still figuring it out.
Data-Aware vs. Data-Ready
Smith set the tone for the panel’s candor early.
“We personalize marketing as an industry, not experiences,” the 24 Hour Fitness executive said. Most operators, he added, have invested their data budgets in predicting churn and optimizing customer acquisition.
Data sits in disparate systems, and even when operators tap into platforms like Apple Health, they’re working with a curated feed, he pointed out.
“You’re not getting all the data,” Smith said. “You’re getting the data that Apple wants to share with you.”
Ultimately, what the fitness industry hasn’t done (yet, at least) is harness data to change outcomes. And right now, Smith sees platforms like ChatGPT Health as a question mark for operators.
“I think the part we have to figure out is, what is our job as operators and providers of services — and what do we leave to ChatGPT Health?” he asked.
There is also the complexity of ensuring HIPAA-compliant data sources and even talent.
“You’ve got to have AI-ready data, and you also have to have an organization that’s ready to take on AI,” Smith said.
The Wearable Inflection Point
Beckman traced the wearable industry’s evolution from step counters to serious health monitors, pointing to COVID as the tipping point. A research collaboration between Garmin, Oura and the Defense Innovation Unit found that wearable data could predict COVID symptoms up to two days before they appeared in Air Force squadrons.
It changed the conversation entirely, and consumers began to see what some wearables were capable of.
“The consumer has moved from ‘how many steps did I take today’ to ‘why did my body battery drop so bad last night,’” Beckman said.
He shared a personal story. After putting his mother-in-law on a Garmin and noticing her body battery and sleep scores were consistently low, he pushed her toward a sleep study, where she was diagnosed with sleep apnea.
“That’s the return on investment you can get from wearables today,” he said.
For fitness operators, Beckman’s message was pointed.
“We have a huge opportunity here,” he said. “The consumer is signaling ‘I want to know more.’ How can we engage our users to help them improve? I think the only way you can do that is by having 24/7, passive data.”
Can Fitness Operators Bring It All Together?
Williams offered a look behind the curtain at where David Lloyd, one of the U.K.’s biggest health-club operators, is headed.
He shared that the U.K. fitness giant is building its own large language model in-house, generating “next best actions” for every member. In practice, it looks like hyper-personalized recommendations, such as suggesting a recovery class, trying a supplement or skipping the HIIT session.
David Lloyd has taken a thoughtful approach, conducting a survey of members and non-members.
“They all said, ‘Sounds great, but please tell me how we got to that recommendation,’” Williams said. Every suggestion will come with an explanation of the logic behind it.
He also revealed that over a third of David Lloyd members are paying roughly $25 a month for wellness apps.
“I’m not saying we can replace every single app,” he said. “But we can tie it with their data that we already know about them — their usage, gate swipes, classes, bookings, wearable data — and we can bring it all together and help them on their journeys.”
David Lloyd plans to pilot the platform later this year, though full rollout is still 18 months to two years out.
Tech Giants Are Working on a Solution
Google’s Mashhadi acknowledged the tech side doesn’t always get it right.
“When we built the ecosystem, we figured we’ll get all this data, we’ll make it available to everybody, and then the operators will be able to take those numbers and turn them into insights for users,” he said.
But the story behind the data was just as valuable.
“Why did I not sleep well? Is it because I was traveling?” he said. “That story is very, very important — and it’s not in the numbers. It’s in the conversation.”
The fix looks a lot like a good coach who understands the context and adjusts the plan for the end user.
Mashhadi said the most exciting aspect is AI that takes stock of everything it knows about you and adjusts your plan incrementally so you meet your goals.
“In order to solve the longitudinal problem, you need longitudinal solutions,” he said. “All the piping is there — and we now have the tool to fill in the gaps around the narrative and the intelligence to actually bring life and help operators and help everybody make those actual next best actions real for users.”
