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Samsung’s bet on the future of connected health: Less data, more action

Inside Samsung’s plan to close the gap between your wearable and your doctor

Published

August 3, 2026

MJ Jucutan

Here’s a paradox worth sitting with: Wearable adoption keeps climbing. A lot of people now walk around with a sensor on their wrist, tracking heart rate, sleep, steps, sometimes ECG. And yet chronic disease rates haven’t moved.

That’s the problem Dr. Hon Pak, Samsung’s Head of Digital Health globally, opened with at a recent panel on the future of connected care. More data hasn’t meant better healthcare. His diagnosis: a first-mile, last-mile issue.

The first mile is that all this wearable data rarely makes it to a doctor in any usable form. The last mile is that even when a doctor says “lose weight, eat better, move more,” that advice tends to dissolve the moment real life takes over.

Picking up kids, caring for parents, getting through a Tuesday, it’s not that people don’t know what to do. It’s that knowing and doing are two different problems.

Samsung’s answer involves three things it says connected care needs to mature: meeting people where they actually are, building enough trust that people rely on the data, and using AI to turn that data into something a person can act on rather than just look at.

The Tuesday evening problem

Karthik Poriya, Head of Product at Samsung Food, framed the everyday failure point clearly. Picture it: long day, you’re tired, staring into the fridge. You’re not reaching for the healthiest option in that moment, you’re reaching for whatever’s fastest and most satisfying.

For years, nutrition tracking has focused on logging what already happened. Poriya’s team wants to intervene right at that decision point instead, pairing Samsung Health’s underlying data (BMI, antioxidant index, glycation markers) with Samsung Food’s recipe index of roughly 40,000 dishes mapped across 34 nutrients, so a health number turns into an actual dinner suggestion rather than another stat to check later.

Dr. Pak backed this with a small, concrete example from his own family: moving leftover cheesecake out of eye-level in the fridge and putting washed, sliced carrots there instead.

Kevin Duffy, CEO of connected fitness company iFit, made a similar point about exercise. The most effective tool for sticking to a fitness plan is a personal trainer, he said, citing roughly 80% higher adherence compared to going it alone.

The problem is cost: US$100 an hour or more in a major city puts that out of reach for most people. iFit’s bet is that AI can deliver something closer to a personal trainer’s precision and motivation at a price that isn’t elitist.

Duffy pointed to three reasons his company partners with Samsung specifically: reach (Samsung hardware is already in people’s homes, on their wrists and TVs), access to the biomarker data needed to build an accurate plan, and the fact that fitness goals don’t exist in isolation from sleep and nutrition data.

Trust has to come before any of this works

None of the behavior-change ambitions matter if people don’t trust the data or the company holding it. Rohit R. L., who heads Samsung’s Technology Innovation Lab in the UK, laid out how his team approaches that.

Privacy comes first: Samsung, he said, treats itself as a custodian of user data rather than an owner of it. On top of that sits clinical validation, meaning published, peer-reviewed evidence that a feature actually works in the real world, not just in a lab.

He gave a specific example: Samsung’s ECG and irregular heart rhythm notifications have been clinically validated and cleared by regulators to detect signs of atrial fibrillation. He was careful with the wording there, detect signs of, not diagnose, since that distinction matters both medically and legally.

A separate study on fall detection for elderly users turned up a more human finding. The detection algorithm worked well in testing, but in real life people don’t wear their watches around the clock, and falls don’t happen on a schedule.

Dr. Pak drew a useful comparison: nobody tells their MRI technician they’re going to fidget through the scan, but with a wearable, you don’t get to control how or when someone wears it. Real-world validation has to account for that.

On the infrastructure side, Rohit described a three-layer privacy approach: on-device protection through Samsung’s Knox security framework, GDPR-compliant data handling, and alignment with the European Health Data Space, including a decentralized clinical trial system where patient identity stays with the hospital rather than moving to Samsung’s side.

Where AI actually comes in

The most technically dense part of the discussion came from Otavio Penatti, who leads Samsung’s Health AI R&D team in Brazil.

His team works on foundation models, the same category of large-scale AI models trained on unlabeled data that underpin most of today’s popular AI systems. Trained once on a huge amount of sensor data, these models can then be fine-tuned for many specific health applications, which tends to make them more accurate than models built for a single narrow task.

Penatti’s team is training these models on wearable sensor data (PPG, ECG, accelerometer) with the goal of getting the model to, as he put it, understand the body’s own signals well enough to translate them into something useful. Longer term, he sees potential in correlating that sensor data with clinical records to flag disease risk before symptoms show up.

Dr. Pak added a striking data point from Stanford research: a foundation model trained on sleep study data was able to look at just a 24-hour window of sleep and predict risk across more than 130 different diseases.

His takeaway was that the signals for a lot of future health problems are already sitting in the data being collected today, we just don’t yet know how to read all of them.

He closed this part with a number worth sitting with. A recent American Medical Association survey found that 97% of physicians have looked at wearable data at some point. Only 15 to 16% actually use it in day-to-day practice.

The top reason cited wasn’t distrust of the data, it was that the data doesn’t plug into existing clinical workflows. That’s part of why Samsung acquired health data platform Xealth, to build a pipeline that gets wellness data into the systems doctors already use.

Five years out

Asked to look five years ahead, each panelist’s answer tracked closely to their own corner of the problem. Poriya described a proactive dietitian in your pocket, one that doesn’t wait to be asked.

Rohit pointed to connected care that clinicians actually trust and patients fully control. Penatti envisioned AI that continuously links everyday behavior to clinical outcomes, catching problems before they start. Duffy’s version was a constant personal wellness coach, sifting through the data noise to tell you exactly what to do next.

The throughline across all four answers is the same: less raw data, more action. Samsung’s panel made the case that the wearable industry has spent the last decade solving for collection, more sensors, more metrics, more dashboards, while the harder problem, turning that information into something a tired person actually does on a Tuesday night, has barely been touched.

Whether foundation models and better clinical integration actually close that gap is still an open question. But it’s clearly the one Samsung is choosing to spend its next five years on.

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Rain or shine, MOVE IT’s new commuter kit has you covered

Now available on GrabMart

Published

August 2, 2026

GadgetMatch

Manila weather is notoriously unpredictable during the rainy season. Clear 7 AM skies easily turn into 5 PM downpours. For motorcycle-taxi commuters, arriving at work dry is a total coin flip.

MOVE IT aims to fix this with Ride-Ready, a line of commuter essentials sold exclusively on GrabMart.

The collection features a packable rain jacket, a helmet liner scarf or cap, and a refresh kit with alcohol spray, cooling wipes, and tissues.

Addressing rider concerns

Motorcycle-taxis are now central to daily commutes. MOVE IT reported a 20% year-over-year jump in monthly active users during the first half of the year. Still, riders consistently voice the same worries: sudden rain, punishing heat, and shared helmet hygiene.

“Filipino commuters have become extraordinarily good at adapting to city life. What they should not have to accept is arriving at a meeting soaked, or starting the afternoon already behind,” says MOVE IT General Manager Wayne Jacinto.

Jacinto calls Ride-Ready a practical fix to help passengers end their ride looking as fresh as when they left home.

Price, availability

MOVE IT didn’t just launch online. From June to July, interactive booths popped up in major business hubs: Makati, BGC, Ortigas, and Cebu City. Commuters could claim items and book rides on-site.

With traffic and bad weather showing no signs of stopping, Ride-Ready offers a simple buffer so riders show up fresh instead of frazzled.

The lineup launched on GrabMart on July 13. Prices start at PhP 275, with mix-and-match savings bundles available. Check MOVE IT’s official social media channels for more details.

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iOS 27 public beta gives us our first taste of Siri AI

You can access the beta for free.

Published

July 16, 2026

Luigi Leonardo

Normally, public betas come and go with nary a peep from anyone but dedicated fans and testers. After all, why care about a beta when the final release is likely just around the corner? This one, however, is special. Today, Apple launched the iOS 27 public beta, and it’s our first taste of the redesigned Siri AI.

Recently, WWDC 2026 unveiled Apple’s latest attempts at entering the AI segment. Whereas previous iterations to incorporate AI failed to make an impact, Siri AI promises to provide users with helpful feedback that’s actually helpful.

Now, in the public beta for iOS 27, users all over can finally access the new assistant. To get to the beta, you need to be a part of the beta program, which you can easily sign up for on beta.apple.com. Once signed up, you can get the update from Software Update in Settings. You’ll see options for a developer beta and a public beta. Choose iOS 27 Public Beta.

At face value, Siri AI offers much of what you’d get from a traditional AI-powered assistant. However, it does slightly differ because it integrates the entire phone. The assistant contextualizes your information (including emails, messages, and photos) to give you the most accurate feedback that you might need.

If that’s not enough, Siri AI also has its own chatbot app. If you’re more used to ChatGPT, the assistant should give you that bit of familiarity.

Now, if you don’t want to go for a beta, Apple is expected to launch iOS 27 in its final form sometime in September.

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The case for traveling without a plan

How Grab’s 5-Star Travel Guide replaced my spreadsheets, for personal travel anyway

Published

July 16, 2026

MJ Jucutan

I have somehow acquired the reputation of a man permanently in transit.

Fill your feed with airport check-ins, road trips, hotel rooms, and race bibs for a decade, and people stop seeing travel as a hobby. They start treating it like a personality trait. And naturally, everyone is always breathless to know: “MJ, how on earth do you manage it all?”

Here’s the truth: every trip begins long before I pack a bag. A good itinerary takes time. Flights, hotels, transfers, backup plans, restaurant lists all have to fit together well enough to make the trip feel worthwhile.

My colleagues would probably call me a Type A traveler. They’ve watched me run international coverages and high-stakes business trips entirely off spreadsheets. Spreadsheets!

Timed down to the exact micro-second, complete with contingency plans for every possible disaster short of an alien invasion.

And they are completely right. For work. But personal travel? Oh, darling, personal travel plays by a completely different set of rules.

The luxury of letting go (and the panic that follows)

A month before departure, I am all about securing the basics. But once the flights and rooms are locked in? I completely let go.

I would much rather leave room for fabulous, unexpected curiosity than fill every single hour with another rigid destination.

Part of it is sheer decision fatigue. I spend so much of my professional life making executive decisions that the last thing I want to do on vacation is have a minor existential crisis at 2:00 p.m. over which artisanal café deserves the honor of my afternoon. I want to wake up, look at the sunlight filtering through the curtains, and let the universe decide.

Of course, ironically, that absolute freedom can spiral into its own fabulous brand of panic. I know I want to go somewhere chic. I just have absolutely no idea where.

Which is precisely how Grab’s 5-Star Travel Guide quietly became the most indispensable accessory of my latest getaway.

Finding somewhere to spend the afternoon

I recently flew to Cagayan de Oro to spend some quality time with my long-term, long-distance, low-commitment, casual boyfriend. (Yes, it’s complicated, but the mystery keeps it glamorous.)

I arrived with absolutely zero plans, and this was entirely deliberate. If there is one thing a strong, independent person must never do, it is rely on someone else to dictate his day — even if that someone is technically his own handsome, local tour guide.

Instead of waiting around for an itinerary to be handed to me, I simply opened my Grab app while I’m in downtown and slithered over to their Travel Guide.

My fabulous friend, Syra, glided over from Midtown, and we agreed to rendezvous in Uptown to finally check out H Proper Coffee, which was practically screaming at me from the top of the Grab list.

It’s the city’s legendary third-wave coffee pioneer — complete with a deeply impressive roastery — and it has recently, thank goodness, expanded to Makati.

: Bowerbird Coffee

The guide also flirted with other familiar, delicious names like Milestone Coffee (where Syra and I had gossiped over lattes just six months prior), alongside Bowerbird Coffee, Fukuro, Apostrophe Café, The Lone Wolf, and Grae Coffee.

I must say, the recommendations were utterly spot-on. They weren’t just highly rated by random bots; these were the actual enclaves that the city’s stylish locals genuinely know and love.

Dinner dilemma (solved!)

The Travel Guide came through yet again when the sun began to set and the crucial question of dinner arose. Now, I absolutely adore discovering hidden neighborhood gems and family-run eateries. They possess a soul that no luxury restaurant could ever replicate.

That said, every proper holiday demands at least one evening where you put on a sharp blazer, splash on some Tom Ford, and indulge in a truly beautiful meal.

Unsurprisingly, Cucina Higala seduced me all over again. Look, I am a creature of habit. If I know an establishment delivers perfection, I will return.

Seeing it sitting proudly near the top of Grab’s curated list felt like a delicious little pat on the back; a quiet validation that my impeccable taste is worth trusting after all.

Beyond the plate

Refreshingly, the guide doesn’t stop at flat whites and fine dining. Grab’s Travel Guide also highlights local luxury hotels.

Though, fair warning, a few of them are the sort that make your credit card wince slightly. (But darling, they are five-star for a reason.)

It also curates actual experiences. Browsing through the app, I found options for everything from heart-pounding whitewater rafting and sharp Pilates studios, to a world-class pottery atelier, a folkloric museum, and a sweeping, adventure-filled mountain retreat.

Some were already on my radar, but others? I would never, in a million years, have stumbled upon them myself. And that is the thrill of traveling this way. You leave just enough empty space in your diary to be utterly surprised.

For the spontaneous traveler

Let’s be clear: planning every detail down to the last centavo is not a flaw. When you’re younger or traveling on a strict budget, every single peso counts, and a meticulously plotted itinerary ensures you maximize both your wallet and your time.

But eventually, thank heavens, you reach a stage in life where the itinerary matters just a little bit less. A stage where time and budget stop being the terrifying monsters standing between you and a boarding pass.

You learn that not every single meal requires three weeks of intense counter-research. Not every hour requires a reservation confirmation number.

Sometimes, the most breathtaking, unforgettable moments happen simply because you wandered into a doorway you weren’t even looking for.

So, book the flight. Secure the hotel. Figure out how you’ll get around. Then let your feelings, and Grab’s Travel Guide, decide the rest.