The New Front Door of Health

Sep 28

16 min read

Health has new front doors, and most of them are outside healthcare. Here is a preview of The Health Shifts 2026, my year-end keynote.

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Consider this the trailer, not the film.

Every year, I close the year with The Health Shifts, my year-end keynote about the health innovation trends you may have missed. This year's edition is called The New Front Door of Health, and its message is simple: the front door of health is moving away from the GP and the search bar, into the places where we live our daily lives.

This article is a preview of that keynote. But please do not mistake it for the show. An article is a different format. On stage, there will be a different story, more examples, better energy and, mostly, better jokes. (Timing a punchline in a paragraph is harder than it looks. I tried.) What you get here is a glimpse of what is coming, and the thinking behind it.

So here is the glimpse. A bathroom scale that takes a six-lead ECG while you stand on it, barefoot, for about 90 seconds. A financial group that listens for early signs of memory loss in older customers, and keeps their children informed. A hospital check-up sold as a five-day holiday, together with Wing Chun lessons and a night cruise on the Pearl River.

None of these came from a doctor's office. None of them started with a search on Google. And all three appeared this year.

They are three of the signals behind this year's show. Since the beginning of the year, the Healthusiasm Intelligence Engine has scanned the world every week for health innovation, with a special eye on what happens outside healthcare. Each week it selects up to 18 innovations that are verified in detail, and puts around 20 more on a watchlist.

Put all those signals together, and one conclusion is clear. For a long time, health had two front doors: your GP and the search bar. Today there are many more. This is the new front door of health. And there is not one. There are many.

Companies from outside healthcare are moving into health, and healthcare is moving out to meet people where they are. Both movements meet at the same doors: where the first health decision is made, where the data is gathered, and where people decide who to trust.

Nine of those doors stand out, from the bathroom to the train station. Here they are, with what they mean for your organisation.

Why the doors are multiplying

People have never been this enthusiastic about being, and becoming, healthy and happy. That is what I call Healthusiasm: the enthusiasm we all have to be healthy and happy, and it is reshaping healthcare from the outside in. www.healthusiasm.com

More and more people take their health into their own hands. They act as the CEO of their own health. And they look for a positive impact on their health in every part of their life: what they eat, how they sleep, where they live, how they move, what they buy, how they travel, even how they bank. Every choice can become a health choice. That turns every company that shapes those choices into a health business, whether it planned to be one or not.

People also bring two things to every door. Expectations, shaped by the best experiences they have had anywhere. And life aspirations: what they are really reaching for, like calmness, energy, safety, belonging or the freedom to live their own life. I map these in my Life Aspirations Model. The companies that meet both, expectations and aspirations, become the doors people choose.

Nine front doors: the health innovation trends of 2026

1. The home

The home is becoming the epicentre of health, starting in the bathroom.

Withings' BodyScan 2 went on sale in the US in July at $599.95. It is a bathroom scale with a retractable handle that takes an FDA-cleared six-lead ECG and measures dozens of other body signals, like vascular age, in a scan of about 90 seconds. What it really means: the first step of a heart check-up can now be a barefoot morning routine, and the long-term record belongs to the company that made the scale.

Samsung received FDA clearance to turn its Galaxy Buds into an over-the-counter hearing aid for mild to moderate hearing loss, through software, with a five-minute hearing test on the phone. No prescription, no audiologist. It rolls out on two models in the last quarter of this year. What it really means: the buyer never has to decide they are a patient. A care pathway becomes an update to something already in their pocket.
Eight Sleep is pursuing FDA clearance for its bed to detect and reduce sleep apnoea, and is testing with Abu Dhabi's health department whether automatically repositioning the sleeper can replace a CPAP machine. What it really means: a mattress cover is moving from tracking sleep towards treating it.
Flow's FL-100, a prescription brain-stimulation headset for depression, launched across the US in September. Patients use it at home. The app feeds adherence data back to the prescribing physician. What it really means: serious treatment moves into the bedroom, self-administered but not unsupervised.

The shift: the waiting room is being replaced by the living room. The companies that make our homes, appliances and routines are becoming part of the care chain.

2. The household

Health management is moving from the patient to the household. The unit that pays, decides and coordinates is increasingly the family.

GoodRx launched a family plan in September: $24.99 a month for a primary member and up to four dependents, including children, adult family members and pets. What it really means: the dog is on the same prescription plan as grandma. That is not a joke about pets. It tells you the billing unit is no longer the patient.
MetLife Korea's treatment support pack for customers diagnosed with a critical illness offers up to 17 services, from a nurse who accompanies you to hospital to childcare, housekeeping, a hotel room and pet-sitting. The benefits can be passed on to a spouse, children and both sets of parents. What it really means: a diagnosis happens to a whole family, and the insurer is starting to pay for the family's daily life, not only the treatment.
UnitedHealthcare offers child and family behavioural coaching to about 13 million eligible members, at no extra cost to their employers. The average participant is 12 years old. What it really means: the relationship is with the parent, and it is built on problems that never become a claim.
And Amazon Pharmacy lets a family member manage someone else's prescriptions from their own account.

The shift: health systems, pharma and most apps are still built one person at a time. Grocers, insurers and platforms already know the household. Whoever holds the family's health account holds one of the most durable relationships in health.

3. The shop

Retailers are moving into health because health gives the physical store a new reason to exist.

In Norway, the discounter KIWI has been cutting prices on healthier alternatives, and reports 35% sales growth for that range so far this year, without a big campaign. In August, it went one step further: its leaner mince is now cheaper than the fattier version. What it really means: the shopper did not have to become healthier. The shelf did. A doctor can tell you to eat leaner meat. Only the supermarket can make it the cheaper choice.
In Belgium, Colruyt Group is piloting "Move & Save": for €14.99 a week, a household of up to three people can train at its Jims gyms, and three sessions a week earn €5 in fruit-and-vegetable credit. What it really means: the gym visit is paid in vegetables. One healthy behaviour pays for the next, inside one retailer.
In Taiwan, the government pays a small reward for verified exercise, and 7-ELEVEN and FamilyMart top it up when people spend it on items like salads and eggs. What it really means: governments are not only regulating the new doors. Some are opening them, and convenience stores are co-funding a public health incentive.
In Hamburg, the discounter Penny installed a complete practice supermarket, with shelves, a freezer and a till with a conveyor belt, inside a neuro-rehabilitation clinic, where stroke patients practise their shopping. What it really means: recovery is measured by whether you can do the errand again, and the supermarket has become a therapy tool.
Walmart closed its health centres in 2024. It is now piloting pharmacist "health ambassadors" in five rural stores, and has announced a Medicare plan with SCAN that gives nutrition guidance informed by members' own shopping.

The shift: the shop is not becoming a clinic. It is becoming the place where the healthy choice is made cheap, easy and rewarded, week after week.

4. The unbundled pharmacy

The pharmacy used to offer everything in one place: the product, the prescription, the advice and the counter. Today each of those can also be offered in other ways and in other places. That does not make the pharmacy smaller. It gives it more doors. [link: podcast EP 82 on the unbundled pharmacy]

In Japan, Sugi opened dispensing pharmacies inside Trial discount supercentres, one of them 66 m² beside the checkouts, in a town where the local hospital is moving prescriptions out to external pharmacies. What it really means: you collect your prescription during the weekly food shop, and the pharmacy meets patients where they already are.
In Germany, Novo Nordisk's Wegovy pill went on sale in September as a self-pay treatment, as Novo extended its digital care programme with smartpatient, part of the online pharmacy Redcare, to the new treatment format. ROSSMANN will launch a mail-order pharmacy by the end of this year, inside an app it says has 12 million users. What it really means: a pharmacy is not only a place. It can be a permission, used by whoever holds the relationship.
Pierre Fabre and Beiersdorf now sell pharmacy brands like Avène and Eucerin directly on Amazon in Germany. Beiersdorf is also investing more in pharmacies: over 50,000 training contacts a year with pharmacy staff. What it really means: when the product is available everywhere, the advice becomes the reason to visit.
In Brazil, Farmarcas, a network of 1,750 independent pharmacies, designed a "weight-loss" aisle that deliberately leaves out the GLP-1 drug and offers everything around it, from protein to supplements, with trained staff. It is piloting in one store. What it really means: the pharmacy moves from handing over the pen to supporting the months of daily life around it.
And the pharmacist's role is growing. England's Pharmacy First has delivered 14 million consultations since 2024 and is adding five conditions, including acne and migraine, from this autumn, starting in a small number of pharmacies. New South Wales announced a trial in which pharmacists will help patients manage high blood pressure and COPD.

The shift: the bundle is being opened, and that creates options. The pharmacy can be in the supermarket, in an app, in the aisle next to the drug, and behind a pharmacist who is becoming the first clinician many people see.

5. The device and the AI coach

Dozens of biomarkers, wireless devices and AI coaches have moved the value beyond the sensor. Our research on wearables points to one path: from tracker, to interpreter, to agent.

The screen is disappearing. When a device no longer shows you charts, it has to decide what deserves your attention. Samsung's SmartThings already adjusts temperature, light and air in the bedroom based on sleep data from a wearable, without the user doing anything. What it really means: the ring never says "your room is too warm". The system just fixes it.
The phone you already own is becoming the sensor. Berlin-based YOU(th) Health Tech uses face video, voice, skin and eye images, typing patterns and step behaviour to assess more than 50 digital biomarkers in under two minutes, and has contracts with clinics and health insurers. What it really means: if a phone can do this, the value is not in the hardware. It is in the interpretation.
That is exactly where the big players are heading. Abbott, a medical device company, is connecting its over-the-counter glucose sensor to Google's AI health coach, rolling out this year. Google is competing for the coach layer that sits above every wrist, whatever brand people wear. Apple has announced that US users will be able to order a $119 blood panel of more than 50 biomarkers at Quest from the Health app, read back as an AI "Health Age". What it really means: a blood test used to be something a doctor ordered because something was wrong. It is becoming something a person buys out of curiosity.
And the wearable is crossing into care. Oura, together with Counsel Health, will take part in a Medicare programme for chronic care from early 2027, with enrolment through the Oura app. WHOOP set up its own physician entity to deliver care in the same programme. Ultrahuman now lets US users pull their hospital records into its ring app for $4.99 a month.

The shift: the search bar is being replaced by a coach that knows your numbers. Consumer hardware companies are quietly becoming care-navigation companies. Whoever turns data into a next step holds the relationship.

6. The everyday app

In China, the apps people open every day are becoming health infrastructure. In the US, much of the AI health stack is sold to hospitals and pharma. In China, it is built into the apps a billion people already use.

Meituan, a food-delivery platform, launched an AI family health manager in April. By August, Meituan says, it had passed 13 million monthly active users. It interprets check-up reports and routes people to medicines, online consultations or appointments, with a network of 250,000 partner pharmacies. Its fastest-growing category was sleep medication. What it really means: health becomes a quick-commerce category, delivered like dinner.
Ant Group, the payments company behind Alipay, upgraded its "Afu" doctor tool so a physician can create an AI double that handles intake and follow-up around the clock and writes summaries into the patient record. It is linked to a consumer app with more than 100 million registered users. What it really means: a payments company now sits on both sides of the consultation.
Ant also took a stake of more than 28% in Boohee, a food database of around 1.6 million items. What it really means: the platform that holds your money and your meals holds your health data too.
Outside China, the same logic appears in delivery apps: Singlife and foodpanda give gig riders in Singapore free outpatient care in more than 1,000 clinics, through the app they already work in.

The shift: health follows frequency. The app you open ten times a day has a better chance of becoming your health door than the app you download when you are ill.

7. The insurer and the bank

Insurers are moving from paying after something goes wrong to taking part in health before anything does. Banks are following.

Korea's NH NongHyup Financial Group had dozens of branches certified as dementia-friendly through local dementia centres, after staff training, and applies dementia response manuals in all branches from September. Its life insurer is piloting nurse check-in calls combined with AI voice analysis of cognitive trends, with updates shared with the customer's children. What it really means: your mother may see her doctor twice a year, but she sees her bank far more often. Your parents' bank may notice cognitive decline before anyone else, and tell you.
In Thailand, Thaivivat Insurance and Decathlon lower the monthly premium as verified movement goes up, with published tables. What it really means: the price of your cover becomes something you can watch respond to your own behaviour.
China's Ping An unveiled 11 health longevity centres across the country. Generali describes its new role as moving from claims payer to health journey partner. In Germany, Allianz offers prevention coaching to policyholders through a partner that receives no health data from the insurer and passes none back.

The shift: the most valuable claim is the one that never arrives. The competitive edge moves from pricing risk accurately to reducing it, and trust depends on how carefully the data is handled.

8. Longevity

Longevity is leaving the elite clinic. It is getting closer, cheaper and more official.

In Singapore, MORROW opened a 45,000 square foot preventive health flagship inside a shopping mall built around wellness and longevity, priced to reach middle-income households, with more than ten locations planned. What it really means: longevity moves from a luxury retreat to the shopping centre.
The gym is claiming it too. Fitness First in the UK built biological-age testing into its "Live.Life.Longer" campaign, and EGYM offers a BioAge score built on millions of training sessions. What it really means: the gym is starting to own a longevity number that used to belong to the clinic.
And governments are making it policy. Dubai set up a Longevity Authority, chaired by the Crown Prince, to regulate the whole longevity value chain. Korea's Ministry of Health and Welfare made anti-ageing and rejuvenation research a flagship of its 2026 health R&D plan, targeting ageing itself rather than only its consequences. In the US, ARPA-H announced up to $144 million for healthspan research.

The shift: longevity is becoming a consumer category with clinical scaffolding, and a public policy goal at the same time.

9. The journey

Health is being built into the way we move: the commute, the car, the plane, the hotel and the holiday.

In New Jersey, Hackensack Meridian Health opened a $200 million health centre at Metropark, one of the busiest stations on the NJ Transit network. What it really means: the doctor's appointment fits between two trains.
In Guangdong, a Guangzhou medical-tourism centre markets a five-day package that combines a health check at a top hospital with Wing Chun, a Pearl River night cruise and duty-free shopping. In the Huadu district, doctors even write "green prescriptions" for forest bathing. What it really means: the hospital becomes one stop on the holiday itinerary.
In Abu Dhabi, the tourism regulator requires every licensed hotel and restaurant to offer at least one healthy dish in each adult menu category, and makes low-sodium salt the default on the table, from October. What it really means: a tourism licence, not a health ministry, sets the nutrition default for your holiday.
A Fairfield by Marriott hotel in Fukuoka opened bookings for overnight postpartum stays with midwives caring for the baby around the clock, starting in October. Fiji Airways sells recovery services to all passengers on two routes, from leg-recovery wearables to red-light therapy in the lounge. And every new car registered in the EU must now carry systems that warn drivers when they are distracted or drowsy.

The shift: time in transit and time away used to be empty time for health. They are becoming some of its most useful moments.

Two movements through the same doors

Look at the nine doors together and you see two movements happening at the same time.

Outside in. Companies that were never in health are taking it up: grocers, builders, banks, airlines, food makers, app platforms. They do it with a relationship they already have. They see people every week, every day, sometimes every hour.
Inside out. Healthcare is leaving its own walls to meet people at those doors. Prescriptions are collected during the weekly shop. Hospital records flow into consumer apps. A treatment for depression is used in the bedroom, while the psychiatrist follows along remotely. Data that was gathered at home ends up in the clinic, and the other way round.

This is not healthcare being replaced. It is healthcare being invited out, because people's expectations are now shaped everywhere else. And no example shows both movements more clearly than GLP-1.

GLP-1: the clearest example of health leaving healthcare

GLP-1 shows both movements at once. The molecule comes from healthcare. The market around it is being built largely outside healthcare. [link: article "The Quiet They're Really Buying"]

In Brazil, four very different players moved within a few weeks. Hypera, a Brazilian pharmaceutical company, launched Semavy, a synthetic semaglutide pen, in pharmacies on 17 September, at up to 67% below the reference price, with its own line of protein and fibre sachets for the side effects. Farmarcas designed a weight-loss aisle without the drug, piloting in one store. The health store chain Mundo Verde created GLP-1 areas in some stores and reached out to more than 200 nutritionists. And Nestlé Brasil put a "GLP-1 Journey" seal on its Nutren Control range.
In the UK, Holland & Barrett signposts shoppers from the supplements aisle to GLP-1 telehealth in more than 700 stores, and supermarkets launched ready meals for GLP-1 users. In the US, Eli Lilly's LillyDirect platform offers GLP-1 patients a free Oura Ring sizing kit, pairing the medication with biometric tracking.
What it really means: the drug is becoming the least differentiated part of the offer. The competition is about everything around it: price, food, monitoring, follow-up and trust. And that is where non-healthcare players are strongest. GLP-1 may be the first drug whose market was largely built outside healthcare. It will not be the last.

More doors also raise a new question: who tells you which door is safe? Where regulation has not caught up, others step in. U.S. News & World Report, known for ranking hospitals, now also rates GLP-1 telehealth platforms. Every new door needs someone who vouches for it.

One to watch: Korea

K-pop and K-beauty conquered the world. Will K-health follow?

Korea is where many new doors are opening at once. A fashion platform, Musinsa, opened a store with a pharmacy on its basement floor. A financial group trains its branches for customers with dementia. An insurer pays for childcare and pet-sitting after a diagnosis. The convenience store chain CU is adding more than 2,000 stores that sell health functional foods, on top of around 6,000. The health ministry has made anti-ageing research a national flagship. And Olive Young's wellness format "Olive Better" saw the foreign share of its sales rise from 7% to nearly half, while the company opened its first US stores this year.

It is too early to call it an export wave. It is not too early to pay attention.

What the new front door of health means for your organisation

If health comes in from everywhere, the strategic question changes, and it is different depending on where you stand.

For healthcare and pharma, the question is: through which doors will our patients come to us, and with what? They will arrive with data from their scale, their ring and their app. With expectations shaped by their bank, their grocer and their delivery app. With products they already use and advice they already received. You do not need to be at every door. But you need to know which doors your patients use, what they bring with them, and how to connect to it.
For companies outside healthcare, the question is: how can we become the front door of health that people are looking for? Many already play a health role without designing for it. The opportunity is to recognise that role and build for it on purpose, starting from the aspirations of the people you already serve.

In both cases, the winners will not be the ones who own the whole journey. They will be the ones who earn a place in it, at the moment it begins. And that moment does not begin in the waiting room anymore. It begins in the bathroom, at the meat counter, on the train, and in a phone call from your mother's bank.

The Health Shifts 2026: see the doors open live

This was the trailer. The show is something else.

The Health Shifts is my year-end show about the health innovations you may have missed this year. On stage, the story is different, the cases are chosen for your audience, and the jokes are better (I promise). Expect to be amazed by what is happening, surprised by where it comes from, and to laugh at the most absurd ones along the way. With the Health Shifts awards for the best, boldest and most absurd health innovations of 2026, and a clear view of where health goes next.

Available from November 2026 to February 2027, for year-end events and kick-offs. Close the year with it. Or kick off the next one.

christophe@christophejauquet.com

Prefer to listen? The Healthusiasm Podcast walks through the nine doors in episode 83.

[link: EP 83 Nine Doors Into Health]