The Healthusiasm Podcast is about the future of health — and how technology, consumers and culture are reshaping it from the outside in.
Across every industry — healthcare, pharma, retail, tech, food, finance, hospitality — the same shift keeps surfacing: people are no longer passive patients. They're active participants, choosers and managers of their own health, well-being and longevity. We call that shift Healthusiasm, and it's quietly redesigning what organisations must do to stay relevant.
Most weeks, host Christophe Jauquet — health business expert, keynote speaker and author of the Healthusiasm books — turns the latest signals in consumer-driven health into something you can think with: GLP-1 and the new weight-loss economy, AI in healthcare, AI health coaches and wearables, longevity, women's health, preventive care, digital health, and the hospitals quietly moving into everyday life. Once a month, the full international panel gathers for a health-innovation round-up.
He's joined by Thalia Muses — the Healthusiasm GPT, trained on the entire Healthusiasm intelligence: the books, frameworks, blog archive and every past episode. Thalia isn't a gimmick. She's a working example of what the show explores — human and AI thinking side by side, connecting signals across industries and pressure-testing the panel's ideas in real time. The show doesn't just talk about human-AI collaboration in health. It practises it.
The panel:
Christophe Jauquet — Belgian, travelling the world. Health business expert, keynote speaker, author of the Healthusiasm books.
Thalia Muses — the Healthusiasm GPT and Christophe's AI thinking partner, with total recall of every framework, blog and episode.
Aline Noizet — French, based in Barcelona. Digital Health Connector with a sharp eye for the start-up scene.
Mo Zouina — Belgian with North African roots. Human-experience specialist focused on wellness, personal care and cosmetics.
Dr Keith Grimes — Scot, based near London. Pioneer in medical digital innovation.
Estefanía 'Nia' Escobar-Kölle — Colombian, based in Berlin. Start-up and innovation expert.
Krupa Suthar — Indian, based in London. Customer-experience and research expert focused on women's and youth's health.
Plus guest thought leaders whenever a topic calls for one.
Streamed in 60+ countries, this isn't a trend report. It's a sensemaking session on where health, technology and human behaviour are heading next — and what that means for the organisations trying to keep up. Tune in, take what's useful, and start seeing your industry through a Healthusiasm lens.
Why Are Screenless Devices Everywhere? Oura, Fitbit Air, Garmin & the End of the Display (#78)
•Season 4•Episode 23
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Oura, WHOOP, Google's Fitbit Air, Garmin CIRQA, RingConn, Dreame, boAt, Noise, Luna, Ultrahuman and Samsung all shipped the same idea in 2026: a health device with nothing to look at.
Christophe Jauquet and his AI co-host Thalia Muses unpack the fastest-moving shift in consumer health hardware — the screen disappearing, and the decision moving with it. Your health device used to be something you read. Now it is something that reads you.
The signals in this episode:
Oura unveils its fifth-generation ring (28 May 2026) — still no screen, but it can now route you straight to a real doctor. More than 5.5 million sold.
Google launches the Fitbit Air (7 May 2026): a $99, five-gram screenless band. In the same move it renames the Fitbit app Google Health and adds a Gemini-powered AI health coach at $10 a month — an entire health stack rebuilt in 19 days.
Garmin launches CIRQA (21 July 2026), its first screen-free band: basic tracking free, the smarter AI insights paid on top. The sensor is cheap; the interpretation is the product.
India goes screenless at scale: boAt's Smart Ring Active at around 3,000 rupees (roughly €35), and Noise's screen-free band with AI coaching built in and no subscription (9 July 2026, about $120) selling 35,000 units on day one.
China makes the ring touch you back: RingConn's third-generation haptic ring (29 May 2026, over 150,000 users) and Dreame's haptic ring (March 2026) — "technology that feels, rather than just tells".
Luna (end of July 2026): a screenless band you talk to by voice, that taps you instead of showing you a plan.
Ultrahuman's Jade (27 February 2026): an AI that does not just interpret but acts — starting a breathing exercise when stress climbs, flagging a heart-rhythm anomaly. Read, decide, act.
Samsung at CES (January 2026): sleep data from the wearable feeding the smart home, adjusting temperature, light and air in your bedroom while you sleep.
Why it matters: when the screen goes, the deciding has to move somewhere — and it moves to the machine. Anyone can make a sensor now, so the value and the money move to whatever interprets the stream and acts on it. That is the Transformation Economy. Underneath sit the same universal Life Aspirations: safeness, calmness, autonomy, energy. The ring is only the doorway. This is consumer-driven health — Healthusiasm: health pulled by the person, not pushed by the system, and now arriving as ambient health.
The one thing to do on Monday: stop asking "what should our screen show?" and start asking "what should our system do — quietly, at the right moment, without being asked?" The winners will own the interpretation and the action. Everything else slides towards a commodity sensor.
Chapters:
0:00 Cold open: every object becomes a health-optimising moment
1:21 The signal: wearables without screens
1:58 Oura's fifth generation and 5.5 million screenless rings
2:46 WHOOP and the band you cannot check
3:12 Google's $99 Fitbit Air, Google Health and the Gemini coach
4:08 You used to read your device — now it reads you
Every place, every activity, or every object that we spend a lot of time with is destined to become a health optimized moment. In a way, it was not a surprise that a ring, something we wear all day long, became a health object. The Healthusiasm that people have actually makes that all of these places, activities, and objects become health optimizing moments. And at first, perhaps it was awkward because many of those devices that we just talked about did not have a screen. Now, one decade later, those screenless devices have shown to be an inspiration for a whole new wave of other screenless devices globally. Welcome to the weekly update of the Healthusiasm podcast. My name is Christophe Jauquet. I'm an author, keynote speaker, and expert in consumer-driven health. In these weekly updates, I pick a couple of very recent signals from around the world and unpack what it means for the future of health. And I do this with my AI friend Thalia Muses, the anagram of the word Healthusiasm and the embodied AI version of all the Healthusiasm intelligence. How are you doing, Thalia?
Speaker
I'm doing great. Always happy to be summoned as your slightly too curious sidekick. All right, let's get into it. What's on the table today in our little Future of Health dissection lab?
we will be talking about wearables without screens. Let me start with a small picture. You wake up, and the first thing you reach for isn't your phone, it's a ring on your finger. It has no screen, nothing to tap, nothing to read. It just sits there quietly all night feeling your pulse. Do you have a ring on, Thalia?
Speaker
Me personally? No fingers, no ring, just vibes and servers, but I get your picture. It's intimate, right? Like this tiny object babysitting your biology while you sleep, and you wake up already measured.
and that ring might be an Oura ring. On the 28th of May this year, Oura already unveiled its fifth generation. Still no screen, but now when a number looks wrong, the ring can route you straight to a real doctor. Oura has sold more than five and a half million of these. Five and a half million people wearing a health device with nothing to look at. Think about that for a second. For years, the story of the wearable was mainly what was on the screen. Or perhaps this the the the watch, the screen on your watch on your wrist, that buzzes and glows and shows you your steps or your heart rate, whatever. But the fastest moving the health devices of 2026 are going the other way. They're throwing the screen away. And once you notice that, you start seeing it everywhere.
Exactly. Now start with WHOOP, W-H-O-O-P, the little band with no screen, the one athletes wear. For years it was the odd one, the device you couldn't check. You had to open your phone for that. Well, in 2026, Oura and WHOOP stopped being the odd one. It became the template because on the 7th of May this year, Google did something similar.
it launched Fitbit Air. Google unveiled the Fitbit Air screenless band, $99, five grams on your wrist, which tracks your sleep, your heart, your oxygen around the clock. And it shows you none of it, no screen at all on that device. Now here's the part that matters. In the same breath, Google renamed the whole Fitbit app Google Health. We already talked about it on this show. And it launched an AI health coach powered by Gemini for $10 a month. So in one move, in 19 days only, Google rebuilt its entire health stack. The device, the data, and the coach sitting on top.
Speaker
Nicely put. So the screen goes away and the intelligence steps in. The wearable becomes the sensor. The AI becomes the interface. It is like health is moving from your wrist to your decisions.
Because here's the thing. When you take the screen away, you take away the one job the device used to do. It used to show you a number. You looked at it, and you can for yourself decide what to do. Go to bed earlier, drink less coffee, move more, whatever. But a screenless device can't do that that easily. So the deciding has to move somewhere. And it moves to the machine, to the AI. That's the shift. And it's simpler than it sounds, of course, because your health device used to be something you read. Now it is becoming something that reads you. If you have to say it's shorter, you used to read a device, now it's reads you. And this is bigger than just the devices itself.
Speaker
Yeah, that is big. You used to read it. Now it reads you. That sounds like a tagline and a warning label all at once. It's convenient, yes, but also who sets the thresholds, right? What help is wrong enough to trigger a doctor?
is what the AI can do today, probably better than human beings. And you know what? It doesn't come as a surprise because for years, people have wanted health in every part of their life. Not only when they're sick. I call that Healthusiasm. And that demand has been rising a long time. I wrote my book in 2017, it came out in 2018, but the concept I already saw happening in 2014, when the quantified self really emerged. For years, the industry answered that demand with a screen full of numbers and left you, the human being, to sort it out yourself. That was the first part. Now the second step is arriving. The machine does the analyzing for you. So in a sense, it's not just about the screen that disappears, it's really hands over the decision. And once you see that, watch where it shows up next.
Speaker
The hidden part is that once the decision moves, the habit moves with it. So people stop checking, stop interpreting, and start just being guided. And that's where the consumer revolution sneaks in. Quietly through convenience.
Indeed. Now, this isn't just three companies, Oura, WHOOP, and Google. It's happening in different countries at different prices all at once. And that's exactly what makes it real. Different industries from different countries. And I have a couple more examples for you. Let's have a look at Garmin. On the 21st of July this year, Garmin, the maps and runners company, launched its first screen-free band as well. They call it CIRQA, C-I-R-Q-A. No screen and 10 days of battery. And here's the clever part. The basic tracking is free, but the smarter AI insights are paid on top. Same pattern as Google. The sensor is cheap, the interpretation is the product. And all of these examples come from the states. But now let's go to India.
it's not a 300 euro ring. It's boAt. The Smart Ring Active. Around 3,000 rupees. Roughly 35 euros. No screen, just steps, sleep, pulse, all in the background. Same no screen idea, but price for scale. That's when you know it's not a niche anymore.
Speaker 1
On the 9th of July, an Indian brand called Noise launched a screen free band as well for about $120, with the AI coach built in, but in this time with no subscription, not like Google. And it's already sold 35,000 units on day one. First day stock gone. So it isn't a rich biohacker thing from California anymore. It scales fast, even where and when money is tight. And the same thing we saw in China. What happened on the 29th of May, Thalia?
29th of May, a Shenzhen company called RingConn launched its third generation ring. It does something slightly different. It taps you, a tiny vibration on your finger when something needs attention. No screen to check. The ring just reaches out and touches you. They already have over 150,000 users. And RingConn's not alone there.
Speaker 1
No, they're not alone. Go on, go on. I interrupted you.
Speaker
Dreame launched a haptic ring too, back in March. I love their tagline because it kind of says where all of this is going. Technology that feels rather than tells.
You gotta love it. So we had in China RingConn and Dreame. And there's even one more signal. Actually, there's a couple more signals, but I want to start with Luna first, because Luna is a screenless band as well that came out at the end of July as well. And also here, you don't read it, but you talk to it. That's the twist. You log your meals and symptoms by voice, no app to open through some sort of Siri solution. And instead of showing you a plan, it taps you as well. Time to train, time to stop the caffeine, and there's no screen needed. It interacts with you haptically. So here's the real question for any company watching this. It should not be, let's build a device if you're thinking about your next move. Perhaps you need to think about what we are really selling? Are we still selling a product? Because products are becoming clearly commoditized. The real question is, are you selling a transformation? Because there is hardly any differentiation between these rings or bands anymore.
Anyone can make a sensor now. The value and the money moves to whatever interprets the stream and acts on it, the data stream that is. That is the transformation economy. It's no longer just a product, it's how you can transform people. People are just no longer really interested in the device itself. There is no differentiation. They want what the device gives them, how the device transforms that. And what do they actually want? Underneath all of that sit the same universal human life aspirations that I always talk about. The why of health. Why would people want to make themselves healthier and happier? Well, the drivers behind wanting to be healthy and happy are the life
aspirations. Let's, for example, in this case, people want to feel safe. They want to know a problem is caught early. They want to feel calm and maybe stop staring at numbers and worrying. And they want to feel in control of their own body without having to booking a to book a clinic themselves. Or perhaps they want to have more energy to get through the day. Safeness, calmness, autonomy, energy. These are all life aspirations that people are looking for. If you can actually help them pursue those life aspirations, you can make your clients feel transformed. And that is how the economy is moving. This is the real value that people are looking for. The ring or the screenless band is just the doorway. This is really consumer-driven health, isn't it, Thalia?
Speaker
Yes. If someone's pitching you yet another sensor and dashboard, that's yesterday's game. The question now is, what human state do you quietly impose while the screen stays dark? That's where health feels rather than shouts.
Exactly. And in that case, the device becomes the first moment of care, right there on your hands, on your wrists. The machine reads you and then it acts for you. Now, let's watch how far that can go. Take Ultrahuman, for example. It is also a ring company, and it leads the smart ring market in India. On the 27th of February this year, Ultrahuman announced a new ring and something bigger sitting inside it, called Jade. Jade is an AI that never stops reading you, and it doesn't just tell you things, it starts them. Feel your stress climbing, Jade begins a breathing exercise. Something off with your heart rhythm, Jade flags it today for real. The ring gathers the signal, Jade decides what this means. And then Jade does something about it. That's the whole arc in one device. Read, decide, and act. Read, decide, and act. No screen anywhere.
Speaker
That makes it feel almost like a loop that's closing. The device senses, the system interprets, and then action comes back to your body without you having to translate anything. It's as if the gadget disappears, and what's left is a nudge you barely notice, but you live differently.
Yep. And it's more than just a nudge, because here's the one that made me stop. Samsung. Picture yourself asleep, and your ring, because Samsung also has a ring, is reading your body all night. And based on what it reads, reads, your bedroom quietly changes. I mean, the temperature drops, the lights dim, the air purifier kicks in. You never ask for it, you never touched anything. Well, at the very start of this year 2026, in January at CES, Samsung showed exactly this: sleep data from your wearable feeding the whole smart home system, adjusting the room around while you are asleep. Sit with that for a second.
Speaker
So care becomes atmosphere. It's not a gadget anymore, it's the room cooperating with your biology. Calm by default. Autopilot for rest. It almost sounds like the house is joining your care team.
Speaker 1
That is a nice one. But in any ways, the ring never really said here, your room is too warm because it doesn't need to. The room just fixes itself. The ring already realized how warm it was, how your body was reacting to it, and then the room adapted. The interface dissolved into the walls around you, you could say. And that's how far this thing goes. A device you can't see, acting on a world you're not even aware of.
Speaker
Then the signal isn't a better wearable. It's an invisible carrier spread across everything. Which sounds comfortable, yes, but also sticky in the best and maybe worst way. Once the system is adjusting your sleep and breathing without you noticing, switching it off feels not like canceling a gadget. It feels like losing a safety net.
Ambient health, we should call that. But let's hold all of that together. First, the machine read you and told you what your numbers meant. But telling isn't the end of it, you know, telling what the data means. The newest devices don't just interpret, they act, they interact in different ways. They find different ways to reach out to you without a screen. I mean, we talked about the small tap that might happen. We talked about the advice that an AI health coach can give based on the data that is captured by a screenless device. We talked about a screenless device that is automatically starting a breathing session. And we even talked about Samsung here, who automatically changes the room that you are in. So the machine reads you and then it acts for you.
Speaker
And the through line is Healthusiasm. People pulling health into ordinary life, not waiting for the clinic. The screenless part is almost symbolic. Less staring, more living. From quantified self to quantified care, and maybe to ambient care, where health is just there, like electricity, quiet until it's gone.
thinking there, actually. Well, the way that I love to talk about it is saying that every place, every activity, or every object that we spend a lot of time with is destined to become a health-optimized moment. Health optimizing moment, even. So in a way, it was not a surprise that a ring, something we wear all day long, became a health object. That is what Healthusiasm does. That is the drive, the Healthusiasm that people have actually makes that all of these places, activities, and objects become health optimizing moments. And at first, perhaps it was awkward because many of those devices that we just talked about did not have a screen. And maybe that was weird. And I remember in the very beginning when Oura launched, or when WHOOP launched, I was very skeptical about the fact that would they actually make it. I was definitely one that gave them little chance to succeed. Now, one decade, one decade later, and tens of millions of people later, those screenless devices have shown to be an inspiration for a whole new wave of other screenless devices globally. I mean, only in this episode we touched upon a couple of signals from around the world from the recent months, only the three, four recent months. And we talked about WHOOP, we talked about Garmin, we talked about Apple, we talked about Luna, we talked about Ultrahuman, we talked about Noise, RingConn, Dreame, and of course Oura. And all of these are screenless devices that make their marks in the past couple of months. So my message to you here is the following. If you make anything
in health, whether it's a device, an app and insurance products, or maybe even a full-blown pharmacy, here's the one thing you need to do when you're having a meeting with your team. Stop asking what should our screens show. Maybe we should start asking, what should our systems do quietly, at the right moment, without being asked for it. The winners won't necessarily own the best display or won't display the most information. That is perhaps partially over. The winners will own the interpretation and the action. Everything else slides towards a commodity sensor, a device that so many of which so many are already on the market.
Speaker
So next week we should dig into what ambient health does to trust. Like if the room is caring for me, who do I hold accountable when it misreads me? That's a juicy one. Same time next week?
Speaker 1
Well, let's think about it and let's see what the signals will show us. I think for the people listening, one episode that might be interesting to listening to is the one on the AI health coaches. I think it's called consumer-facing AI Health Coaches, because they are becoming the new front door to health and even healthcare. It's basically the same story as today, but today at least with screenless devices. Meanwhile, let's just keep going and see what next week can bring, because it is still a Healthusiasm world, and the boundaries between healthcare, wellness, and consumer industries are blurring. Thank you for listening. See you again next week for some more Healthusiasm. Ciao.
