Does Tracking Your Health Data Make You Healthier?

(MENAFN- Swissinfo) From monitoring sleep patterns to scanning your whole body, an increasing number of healthy individuals are privately tracking their physical data to stay in shape. But what are really the benefits? This content was published on January 6, 2026 - 09:00 10 minutes

From innovative treatments to unequal access to medicine, I cover health topics and keep an eye on Switzerland's Health Valley. I'm Swiss-Turkish, and have a background in communications, journalism and photography. Before joining SWI swissinfo, I covered technology and health at Euronews, and my work has been featured in international outlets including Fayn Press, Mediapart, Le Temps and Times of Malta.

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Influencer Kim Kardashian shocked fans this November when she revealed she had been diagnosed with a brain aneurysm that was spotted during a full-body scan at a private clinic. She first posted to her 354 million fans about these scans in August 2023, prompting some media outlets to call the practice the“latest wellness status symbol”.

Although there is no official data on the number of clinics providing entire body tests to seemingly healthy individuals, the offer is growing and has spread from North America to the rest of the world. In Switzerland, where private clinics, hospitals and luxury wellness centres have been offering preventive health treatments for decades, at least five different start-ups offering full-body scans have popped up in the last three years.

These clinics complement an array of recent preventive health practices at the intersection of wellness and longevity like wearables, small trackers fitted on everyday devices such as phones and watches to measure anything from stress to ageing. Thanks to their ubiquity and increasing affordability, these tools are now part of everyday life. But questions on their real benefits to health remain open and data remain scarce.

“In just two generations, our lifespans extended by 20-30 years, so people between the ages of 50 and 70 want to age healthily,” says Dr Francis Meier, a co-founder of the Swiss Center for Preventive Medicine at the Hôpital de la Tour campus in Geneva.

“You have to consider what is good for the patient, and not what is good for business, and those two things don't always go together,” he says.“[Full-body scans] are a business set up from scratch to make money”.

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