Ideas/feature requests

Hi, so I started using Welltory fairly recently, I'm really enjoying it, especially the detailed HRV breakdowns and all the different metrics, SNS/PSNS balance, and learning something new about coherence. As I'm using it though I've been thinking of little improvements I'd like to see, and thought I'd share them here.

1) Gender/sex option that uses the average of male and female data.

I understand that the algorithm works by comparing your data to the population based on demographics like sex, and that there are sex-based differences in metrics, and that most of the data/research out there is in male and female cisgender populations. But some of us have physiology that may be intermediate between the male and female averages. In my case, I was assigned female at birth but have an androgenic hormone profile (testosterone levels in the male range) due to transgender HRT.

Whoop has an option when you select "other" for gender to either use the male baseline, the female baseline, or to use the average of both baselines. I chose to use the average of both because I feel that is more accurate for me. I don't think it's fair to compare myself to women considering I have male testosterone levels and that really is going to change my performance, but at the same time I don't feel my performance is quite at the level of cisgender men my age--I still have disadvantages relating to my birth sex, estrogenic puberty, and living as hormonally female well into my 30s.

I really liked how Whoop handled that, and I think it would be the easiest way to implement better inclusivity with the datasets that you already have.

2) "Guest reading" option.

Sometimes when I'm hanging out with friends, I want to be able to show them how cool my new biometric toys are. I guess I could do a reading for them and then delete it, but the problem is it would still be comparing their data to my past data, and it would have my demographic info as a baseline. It would be good to be able to take a guest reading, where I would input this new person's age and sex, and it would just do it as if it were a first reading on a new account. Guest readings don't need to be stored long term (I just want to be able to show my friend in the moment, I don't need it on my account forever) and they wouldn't be tracking the person's trends over time, but they'd have access to all the same premium features I have on my paid account for that one-off reading. It wouldn't be a replacement for having your own account because it's not comparing different readings of the same person or storing stuff over time or remembering your demographics or anything.

I think this could help spread the word too and get people interested in Welltory!

3) Pulse wave velocity.

My Oura Ring tracks my PWV, which is cool! Even if Oura doesn't want to share that data automatically, I can't even input it manually and Welltory doesn't analyze that. I think it could give some interesting insights!

4) Better communication on cardiac health vs. ANS health.

This one isn't for me specifically--I knew exactly what I wanted out of Welltory when I signed up, and I'm happy with what it provides in understanding ANS health. But I notice many of the negative posts on this sub are from people who mistakenly thought that HRV was a cardiac health metric, not understanding ANS health. Hence people feeling anxious and panicky and overwhelmed by the data. Giving more educational breakdowns of what all the stats mean isn't helping them if what they're missing is something more fundamental--they're thinking their HRV metrics indicate a cardiac problem when it doesn't.

This seems to especially lead to feedback loops where people who are prone to anxiety (either just GAD, or may even have compulsive health anxiety) download the app, the app correctly identifies their anxiety in their ANS health (the two are quite closely connected), then seeing their poor statistics convinces them they have heart disease and they're dying, which worsens their anxiety, which worsens their HRV metrics, and down and down the spiral they go, until they come to hate the app and complain about it.

Instead, I think the app should communicate more clearly that ANS health is not directly indicative of cardiac health and is measuring something different which is important for different reasons--although the two are not wholly unrelated, it's more that heart disease is one possible cause of ANS dysfunction, rather than ANS dysfunction indicating heart disease. It should also explain better why people should care about their ANS anyway, even though poor ANS metrics don't mean a heart attack is imminent. In people who are in this feedback loop with anxiety, a better use of the app for them would be to use their HRV data to understand and manage their anxiety itself, rather than becoming panicked that they have heart disease.

Basically, an anxiety-detector being mistaken for a heart-disease-detector is a panic spiral waiting to happen.

But in addition to that, since so many users seem to want cardiac insights, perhaps Welltory should branch out more in that direction--and communicate better to users which metrics are more relevant for their actual cardiac health, what they should be measuring there and how their heart is actually doing. Incorporating PWV as mentioned above would be useful in this direction, and badgering people to find out their blood pressure and input that would also help as BP is an important metric in cardiac health. Perhaps giving people clear graphics on how their actual heart is doing would both give these users what they actually wanted, and reassure them that poor HRV is not heart disease.

It's understandable that so many people are actually looking for cardiac health help--heart disease kills a lot of people, many people have known someone who died of it, sometimes a family member, and may be getting warnings from their doctor that this is something they need to keep an eye on. I think it would be good to meet that need--and if people end up learning more about their HRV too in the process, that might help them improve their quality of life as well.

I don't want less ANS data at all, ANS data is why I'm here--but more cardiac data, and better communication about the difference between the two, could clear up a lot of misunderstandings and please more users.

5) Camera OCR for drug store blood pressure monitors and maybe even bathroom scales?

Relating to the point above, I was thinking about how to get more people to put their blood pressure into the app. I was thinking at first maybe some kind of discount partnership with a company like Omron that makes blood pressure monitors and smart scales, which would also be cool, but I was thinking how to make the barrier to entry even lower for people who don't want to get new devices.

Almost everyone has a supermarket or drug store nearby with one of those big shared blood pressure cuffs. Of course you can go there now and manually input your data into Welltory. But wouldn't it be even more convenient if you could just point your camera at the output screen you get at the end of the measurement and it "just works"? Of course you'd be able to edit it if it got it wrong, but if it worked well enough it would just be convenient and a big time saver--check your blood pressure, point your camera at the results screen, go on with your day with your BP logged and trends visible over time.

Weight is a less direct indicator but still important for managing cardiac health. Integration with smart scales is all well and good, but for those of us with a "dumb scale," it would also be cool to just hit input weight and point the camera at the number on the scale and have it just read it. Yes, I know, it just saves you 3 taps anyway, but it just feels smoother and more streamlined--might as well if you do the BP reading thing, which feels even more useful because it fills 3 fields instead of 1.