Wearables: Why Dr Shriram Nene wants you to look beyond the numbers

Are wearables making us healthier or just more anxious? Dr Shriram Nene explains at the HealthWealth Summit.Dr Shriram Nene shared his thoughts on wearable at the HealthWealth Summit.New Delhi,Oct 29, 2026 15:35 ISTWearables can track your sleep, count your steps, estimate the calories you burn and even flag changes in your health. But are we becoming too dependent on these numbers? And when does tracking your health turn into worrying about it?At the HealthWealth Summit, Dr Shriram Nene weighed in on the growing popularity of wearables, health supplements and wellness hacks, explaining why technology can be useful for monitoring health but should not be treated as the ultimate authority on it.Wearables, he said, can work like a dashboard, helping you understand your health trends over time. However, the numbers need context."There are things you can learn from wearables. They can act as a dashboard," Dr Nene said, comparing these devices to the dashboard of a car, which gives you information about your speed, fuel levels and battery. The idea is to use wearables to understand the direction in which your health is moving and make adjustments accordingly, rather than fixating on individual readings.He illustrated this with a familiar example. Your wearable might tell you that you did not get enough sleep the previous night, even when you wake up feeling perfectly rested. This raises an important question: should you trust the device or how you actually feel? The same applies to metrics such as the number of steps you have taken or the calories you have burned. According to Dr Nene, the focus should be on the bigger picture of what you are trying to achieve, with wearable data helping you understand whether you are moving in the right direction.In other words, a sleep score or step count should not become the sole measure of your health.The problem with health hacks and supplementsDr Nene also addressed the booming wellness industry, particularly the growing enthusiasm around supplements and health advice shared on social media.His concern is that people are often encouraged to take supplements without establishing whether they actually need them."Why are we supplementing in patients who don't have a visible abnormality?" he asked, arguing that people should not be trying to replenish nutrients when there is no evidence of a deficiency or other clinical need.He also cautioned against taking health advice from social media influencers without checking the credibility of their claims. In an environment where wellness trends can spread rapidly through reels and online recommendations, he stressed the importance of looking for credible scientific evidence rather than relying on hype."There is a preponderance of data, and not just one paper, but many papers, and a consensus on something being correct," he said, explaining why health recommendations should be backed by a substantial body of evidence.For Dr Nene, this is also a matter of medical responsibility. Recalling his experience as a practising doctor, he said the Hippocratic principle of doing no harm remains central to how he approaches health advice.He emphasised that he cannot recommend something in good conscience if there is no evidence to support it.Why your health needs more than one data pointDr Nene also spoke about the importance of looking at health holistically, rather than relying on isolated readings from a wearable or a single test.At Pathfinder Health Sciences that Dr Nene is building, he said the approach involves building a connected system that brings together information such as genetics, medical history, family history, social history, socioeconomic background and the microbiome, alongside wearable data. The aim is to create an end-to-end feedback loop that helps people understand their health in context, rather than interpret each new number or test result independently.This distinction matters in an age when tracking health has become easier than ever, but understanding what the numbers actually mean can be considerably more complicated.Wearables can offer useful insights, but they are not a substitute for medical evaluation or evidence-based advice. Similarly, supplements and wellness hacks are not automatically beneficial simply because they are popular.Dr Nene's larger message was clear: technology can help us become more aware of our health, but awareness alone is not enough. The information we collect must be interpreted carefully, backed by credible evidence and used to make informed decisions, rather than becoming another source of anxiety.Watch the HealthWealth Summit LIVE here: - Ends