While the Apple Watch has many different use-cases that make it a great companion to the iPhone, one of its most powerful applications is as a health monitoring tool. With its heart rate measurement, temperature sensing, sleep monitoring and blood oxygen scanning it can collect myriad data. Coupled with some smart algorithms, it’s now possible to better understand how our bodies are operating and what factors impact how we feel.
That’s lead to an explosion in the number of health and well-being apps in the App Store. Over the last few months, I’ve been looking at two specific apps: Athletic and Welltory. Both Use a combination of direct measurements from the Apple Watch – in particular Heart Rate Variability (HRV) as well as temperature, blood oxygen saturation (SpO2) and sleep quality.
What is HRV?
Both Welltory and Athlytic use HRV as a key metric.
When we think about our heart rate as being steady, most people assume that each beat occurs at the same time interval as the one before. For example, if your heart rate is 60 beats per minute (bpm), we assume there’s a beat each second.
But there is slight variation, measured in milliseconds, between each beat. For example, the intervals between beats might be 1.03 seconds, 0.96 seconds, 0.95 seconds, 1.00 seconds and so on. That variation is your HRV.
When HRV is low, it indicates that your body is under some form of stress and that your autonomic nervous system (think of this as your body’s autopilot for managing critical bodily functions) takes over to ensure it conserves energy. A higher HRV suggests your body is not operating under significant stress.
It’s a little counterintuitive but a lower HRV is a sign of some sort of stress while a higher HRV indicates that your body is performing closer to its peak.
If you exercise regularly, a low HRV can be an indicator that you need to reduce your training load or take a rest day while a high HRV suggests you can increase your activity level (moderately – no one wants an injury caused by over-doing things). Factors such as what you eat, how much sleep you’re getting and illness impact your HRV.
Quick Review: Welltory
App Store: https://apps.apple.com/au/app/welltory-heart-health-monitor/id1074367771
Cost: free download, extra features monthly from $19.49, annual from $139.99, Lifetime $499.99
App Privacy: uses Location and Contact info
Pros
- Battery gauge that gives regular feedback
- Sleep monitoring
- Adaptable daily goals
- Exportable journal
Cons
- Complexity
- Advice often feels generic and superficial
- Feed can be difficult to review
- Lacks a homescreen widget
Welltory (the name is a portmanteau of wellness and laboratory) uses HRV to assess overall health and wellness. It correlates HRV with other measures such as sleep quality and activity and uses AI to provide advice and how much time you should spend exercising and providing advice on how to reduce stress.
As you’d expect, there’s integration with Apple Health which means metrics such as blood pressure, if recorded, as well as weight and body composition, can all be pulled together. And it can create a journal that can be shared with doctors or others.
There’s no home screen widget which means you need to open the app to see what’s going on. But there’s an online portal where you can look at your data online – much easier than on a smaller iPhone display. The online portal includes the Welltory Academy. This is an online resource with materials you can read to learn about the science behind HRV, its impact on productivity and your workouts.
After several months of using Welltory there are a couple of things that are apparent.
- The developers are committed to continually improving the app. There have been many updates, major and minor, in the months I’ve been using Welltory. This is a huge positive. The developers are active on Reddit answering questions and responding to feedback.
- The main screen of Welltory is a stream of data. It starts with a a brief summary of where you’re at now with the “battery” – a measure of your energy levels, and a pressure gauge. Then there’s a stream of information such as workouts, sleep, today’s goals and yesterday’s report. But the entries, while given a time stamp, aren’t given a date stamp which makes it tricky when looking back. There are headings for each day but they’re easy to miss as you scroll.
One of the key features of the Welltory feed is an item that summarises your stress, energy and health levels by analysis of your HRV and the use of AI. It’s a handy summary that would make a great widget for the iPhone homescreen.
The “Heart rate variability” analysis uses HRV to provide nine different metrics. The data is interesting but doesn’t really help give more insights. For example, when I look at my current readings, five of the nine metrics are in the “OK” range. Looking the other four, three are out of the normal range because of “stress” while the other suggests I may be tired or sick – which makes sense given I’m coming off having a heavy head cold.
Welltory is clearly the work of people who are passionate about health and have a strong background in science. The data it delvers is rich and comprehensive. I feel it would be more useful if it delivered more focussed information that could be used to help people make better health decisions. I found that its advice was often generic (meditate, listen to music – that sort of thing).
There are some neat Apple Watch complications so Welltory’s data is easily accessible even when you don’t have your iPhone handy.
Quick Review: Athlytic
App Store: https://apps.apple.com/au/app/athlytic-ai-fitness-coach/id1543571755
Cost: free download, extra features monthly $5.49, annually $45.99
App Privacy: Does not collect any data
Web: https://www.athlyticapp.com
Pros
- Clean interface
- Nice homescreen widget
- Simple journaling function
Cons
- No web app for viewing data
- No easy way to send data to doctors or other health professionals
Athlytic brings a comprehensive, yet easy to read, interface to users looking to monitor and manage their well-being. It’s main screen is dashboard that summarises your status for the day and shows how well you’ve receded from the previous day’s activity, a sleep quality rating, you exertion level for the day and how much energy you’ve burned.
The dashboard also shows a traffic-light style display with five indicators: HRV, resting heart rate (RHR), respiratory rate, SpO2 and temperature. When they are in the healthy range, there’s a simple green tick or an amber exclamation point if you’re slightly outside the expected range. If you see a red indicator then you’re well outside the expected range for one or more of those metrics.
As well as the app, Athlytic offers a variety of different Home Screen widgets in different sizes that show varying amounts of information. My preferred one is a widget that shows my current recovery, my exertion level for the day with an indication of whether I’m a reasonable range to promote recovery or if I’ve overdone things, and a sleep quality indicator.
By keeping things simple, Athlytic avoids overwhelming me with too much information. But the information it provides enables me to make decisions about my day and my activity plans. For example, if my HRV or RHR are outside the expected range, and my exertion level for the last day or so has been outside the recommended range, then I have a clear signal that I need to take it a little easier over the next day or so.
This is similar to the approach Gentler Streak takes. Rather than Apple’s less flexible approach based on set amounts of movement, exercise and standing (which, since iOS 18, can be suspended or changed more easily) it uses data to adapt your training load.
When I’ve been unwell, Athlytic picked up changes in temperature, RHR and HRV and advised me that my health was compromised. While I was quite aware, there are some illnesses that are less obvious and have more subtle effects.
Like Welltory, there’s an active Athlytic subreddit where users and developers share information.
Which is better – Welltory or Athlytic?
I’ve paid for subscriptions to both apps so I could test out their ‘pro level’ features. As I was a fairly early adopter of Welltory, I picked up a lifetime (it’s not clear if that’s my lifetime or someone else’s) Premium subscription for a lot less than the current price. My annual subscription to Athlytic Pro costs a lot less than the same term for Welltory.
Where it comes to functionality, Welltory tries to do a lot more. But I get the feeling the design is very heavily influenced by scientists and engineers rather than user experience experts. Perhaps that’s not fair but it makes finding useful information harder. Having to scroll through a feed can be tedious and it’s easy to miss what day’s data you’re looking at as entries are only time stamped and not dated. Even something that said x hours ago rather than the time would be more useful.
Making decisions is easier with Athlytic. I can look at one screen and see nine pieces of pertinent data in a clean design that makes it simple to see if there are any negative indicators. And I’m just one tap from looking back recent trends.
Welltory is not a terrible app. But, based on my use and needs, Athlytic is easier to use, offers more usable information and lets me see what I want through intuitive widgets on my iPhone and complications on my Apple Watch.
Anthony is the founder of Australian Apple News. He is a long-time Apple user and former editor of Australian Macworld. He has contributed to many technology magazines and newspapers as well as appearing regularly on radio and occasionally on TV.