Fitbit acquires cloud-based software startup Twine Health, which connects patients with health coaches and doctors and had raised ~$10M according to Crunchbase
Nearly all Twine Health employees will join Fitbit — Fitbit announced today that it has acquired a small …
Context & Ripple Effects
Twine Health is the third software acquisition in Fitbit's run from fitness gadget maker toward a health company: it bought the FitStar training app in 2015 and Pebble's software assets in 2016, and last month Wired detailed how declining revenue and Apple Watch pressure pushed Fitbit into personal medical devices through its b2b arm, Health Solutions.
Twine's coach-and-doctor connection platform gives that pivot a services layer — hardware alone was losing the spec war with Apple. Months later, Fitbit doubled down by putting its device data in front of physicians via Google's Cloud Healthcare API, confirming the clinical direction this deal set up.
First-order effects
- Nearly all Twine Health employees join Fitbit, folding a ~$10M-raised coaching platform directly into the Health Solutions offering sold to employers and health plans.
Second-order effects
- Apple Watch competes on device capability, so Fitbit's counter is bundling human coaching and clinician monitoring with its trackers — moving the battleground from hardware specs to paid health services.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, wearables consolidate from consumer gadgets into care-delivery infrastructure, where a tracker's value is measured by insurer and employer contracts rather than retail units.
The trend: Consumer wearable makers are repositioning as healthcare services companies, buying small clinical-software startups to build the layer between device data and doctors.