According to new research, nearly half of users ultimately abandon the digital health or wellness technologies they adopt. This startling finding reveals a major challenge amid the industry’s rapid growth.
Health and wellness technologies are everywhere — on our wrists, in our pockets, and guiding our sleep. In fact, nearly 1 in 3 Americans uses a wearable device to track their health and fitness.
Yet, engagement is breaking down just as quickly as adoption is rising. While people drop off for reasons ranging from poor usability to notification fatigue and cost, the message is clear: Early popularity doesn’t guarantee staying power.
That’s because many health tools are built around surface-level engagement tactics rather than real drivers of sustained use. Too often, health brands assume that more personalization equals better outcomes — but without context, clarity, and trust, even the most tailored experiences can feel invasive or irrelevant. When value isn’t obvious or experiences feel burdensome, trust erodes and disengagement follows.
This presents a critical challenge for health organizations: We must shift our focus from acquisition to sustained engagement. But how do we design digital experiences that users will embrace for the long term?
Why user engagement falls apart
Digital health tools rarely fail because of technical limitations. In fact, failure often happens because the surrounding experience wasn’t designed with enough care or context.
We need to move from thinking in terms of touchpoints to thinking about earning trust points. Every notification, prompt, sync, or screen offers a key interaction point—a small moment that signals either ‘this technology understands me’ or ‘this experience is asking something of me.’ These interactions become entries in a user’s internal trust ledger. Smooth, intuitive moments add credit; intrusive, irrelevant, or confusing moments subtract from it. Over time, those points accumulate, and when the perceived effort outweighs the real-world value, engagement unravels.
One of the biggest drivers of friction in health and wellness is the Goldilocks problem. Too many irrelevant notifications turn into white noise, while too few make the technology feel absent or unhelpful.
The challenge is understanding when a nudge is helpful versus when it’s intrusive or irrelevant. If an app consistently interrupts at the wrong moment or for the wrong reasons, people tune it out. Quick-hit engagement mechanics like badges, streaks, or daily reminders can certainly spark early engagement, but when overused or poorly personalized, they send a subtle yet damaging signal: this experience doesn’t know me.
Research backs this up: studies show that excessive or irrelevant notifications contribute directly to “alert fatigue,” which leads users to ignore or disable notifications. Some may abandon an app altogether.
We need to respect the attention we seek within an experience. Without intentional design and thoughtful calibration, health and wellness products that were meant to motivate end up feeling manipulative or generic. They become less respectful of a user’s time and ultimately less relevant to their broader health journey.
3 ways health technologies can drive long-term loyalty
Longevity is about finding the right intersection point between personalization and privacy, information and insight, and nudging and overwhelming. Striking this balance enables you to design digital experiences that meet people where they are and adjust as needs change.
As you look to strengthen long-term engagement, here are three areas to prioritize:
1. Establish trust as your entry point
First impressions matter, especially in health. Trust begins the moment someone opens your app or reads your user agreement. If the language is dense, legalistic, or vague about data use, users hesitate. If it’s approachable, transparent, and human, you’ve already earned an early trust credit.
Relationship building doesn’t have to happen all at once, either. For example, don’t ask 30 onboarding questions before a user sees any value. Instead, ask only the questions necessary to tailor and start the experience. Then, expand the relationship over time through “just-in-time” questions, invitations to share meaningful inputs like goals, routines, and life changes, and gentle nudges that feel natural rather than forced.
Remember that trust is cumulative. Thoughtful pacing sets the tone for an experience that can grow with the user instead of overwhelming them on day one.
2. Offer insight over information
Consumers are drowning in health data: sleep scores, step counts, stress levels, biometrics — the list goes on. But what users truly crave are distilled insights: clear, contextual takeaways that help them make better decisions amid the data noise.
Tools like Fitbit retain loyalty because their interface makes performance easy to decipher: clean visuals, intuitive navigation, and trend lines that tell a quick story. The Oura Ring follows the same design principle. Its tabbed design breaks complex data into digestible categories like sleep, stress, and activity. Users can dive deeper if they want, but the default experience remains elegant.
Apps that present raw data without interpretation feel burdensome, whereas apps that translate data into meaning feel indispensable.
3. Personalize to match the full person
Personalization is a baseline expectation in digital health, but it requires
more than tailoring content. Meaningful personalization shows users that you see them as whole people. It reflects their goals and habits, alongside the context and conditions shaping their choices.
Consider financial wellness, which plays a major role in someone’s ability to stay proactive about their health. When people feel financially stable, they’re far more likely to focus on healthy habits. Our research shows 84% of people who say they feel in control of their financial future are very proactive about their health.
But when money is tight or uncertain, staying engaged in wellness may take a back seat — 65% of those who do not feel in control of their financial future report not being proactive about their health.
This dichotomy is a reminder that behavior change is deeply connected to a person’s broader circumstances. When digital health apps acknowledge those realities — offering flexible pathways, adaptive goals, and encouragement that adjusts to a user’s lived context — they become essential.
Sustained engagement starts with trust
Stickiness occurs when digital health tools become a part of how people take care of themselves: not just an app or wearable, but a companion they can rely on.
Show me you know me: People want health and wellness solutions that help them interpret their data, not drown in it. They want experiences that feel personal, not generic. And they want support that respects their lived experiences and goals rather than making them feel like they’re failing.
When health brands pair thoughtful technology with thoughtful support, they can improve user satisfaction, boost patient outcomes and adherence rates, and increase ROI for digital engagements.
Health organizations have a critical role to play in making this experience possible, too. They can champion tools that seamlessly integrate into care plans, reinforce positive habits, and meet patients where they are — whether by subsidizing access, tailoring recommendations, or weaving app and device insights into ongoing clinical conversations.
Together, we can create something far more meaningful than a digital feature set – building relationships that last while improving health and well-being over time.
About Pat McGloin
Pat McGloin is the Managing Director, Health & Life Sciences at MERGE, where he has led and launched commercial strategies for Roche, Supernus Pharmaceuticals, Flexion Therapeutics, Viatris, Biocon Biologics, UCB Pharmaceuticals, Astellas, Boston Scientific, Medtronic, B. Braun, and CSL, among others. Previously, Pat was Chief Commercial Officer for a global life sciences company and had responsibility for North America.
