When haze blankets the skies, outdoor runs, cycling sessions and weekend hikes may have to take a back seat. But changing conditions do not mean personal wellbeing has to be put on hold.

For Malaysians, the key is to adapt rather than abandon healthy habits. From swapping outdoor runs for treadmill sessions to prioritizing hydration and recovery, small adjustments can help maintain a balanced lifestyle indoors.

The Samsung Galaxy Watch9 and Watch Ultra2, paired with Samsung Health, offer connected tools to support these daily wellness routines. From tracking indoor workouts and monitoring sleep to providing personalized insights through Sleep Coaching, Energy Score, Antioxidant Index and hydration alerts, the ecosystem helps users stay informed and motivated as their routines change.

1. Keep Moving with Indoor Workouts

When haze disrupts outdoor activities, switching to indoor exercise can help maintain consistency. Treadmill running, stationary cycling, strength training and stretching offer practical alternatives to outdoor workouts.

Allison Yee, national triathlete and fitness content creator with over 350,000 followers on social media, who recently placed third in the Malaysian women half marathon category of the Kuala Lumpur Standard Chartered Marathon 2026, trains indoors when haze makes outdoor exercise less practical, sees it as an opportunity to focus on what she can control.

“Staying indoor and using the gym to train. Use this chance to maximize strength training and structured workout on treadmill. Find a little enjoyment or joy with accompany to the gym, listen to music or watch a video when on the treadmill, and focus on the upcoming event or race. You can only control what you can control.”

Samsung Health’s Fitness section helps users explore workouts suited to their interests and fitness levels. Paired with Galaxy Watch, users can track supported indoor exercises, monitor heart rate, record workout duration and review activity data to understand their progress.

Fitness Index is also another aspect of the new Galaxy Watches that ensures exercise routines are working by analyzing metrics like heart rate, VO2 max and daily steps against users’ peers. By clearly identifying individual physical strengths and weaknesses, it delivers tailored content and personalized goals so users can make continuous, targeted improvements. This feature can help turn everyday movement into a more consistent habit.

Check out how Allison takes advantage of all the Galaxy Watch has to offer:

For those with busy schedules, even short home workouts, stretching breaks or a few squats can make a difference. As new dad and food, wellness and lifestyle content creator Al Hisham puts it, “1 is better than 0.” Starting small can build momentum over time. Learn how he incorporates working out indoors into his daily routine:

During unhealthy haze conditions, avoid strenuous outdoor exercise. Indoor workouts should also be reconsidered if indoor air quality is poor.

2. Fuel Your Body

Exercise is only one part of maintaining good health. Balanced nutrition and adequate hydration are equally important, especially when disrupted routines make it easy to forget healthy habits.

Samsung Health helps bring these habits into everyday routines through supported Galaxy Watch features. For those who working out indoors and working up a sweat, Nutrition Alert provides hydration guidance by estimating sweat loss relative to body weight, helping users stay aware of their hydration needs during demanding activities.

The Antioxidant Index can also play a part in ensuring you meet your daily nutrition targets, estimating carotenoid levels in the skin using the Galaxy Watch’s advanced BioActive Sensor. Carotenoids are pigments found in many fruits and vegetables, making the feature a useful prompt to pay more attention to fruit and vegetable intake.

On this front, dietician Joey Khor, local nutrition content creator, recommends starting easy by keeping healthy habits simple and achievable, rather than waiting for the perfect time to begin. Learn how she pays attention to nutrition here:

“Do home workouts, walk and run on a treadmill, mindful with eating habits like limiting fried foods and stay hydrated. Choose a YouTube workout and tell yourself you are going to exercise for 5 minutes. Once you start, it’s easier to keep going as you’ve built the momentum.”

Together, these tools complement Samsung Health’s activity tracking by encouraging users to look beyond exercise and consider the everyday habits that contribute to wellbeing. The Antioxidant Index is not a direct measure of overall nutritional status, so a balanced diet remains essential.

3. Sleep Better and Understand Your Energy

Rest is an important part of staying healthy, particularly when balancing work, family commitments and exercise. Consistent sleep schedules, relaxing bedtime routines and a comfortable sleeping environment can support better recovery.

With the latest Galaxy Watches and Samsung Health, users can review their sleep duration, patterns and related insights to better understand their sleeping habits.

Sleep Coaching takes this further by offering personalized guidance based on recorded sleep data and habits. These insights can help users identify opportunities to improve their routines and develop more consistent sleep patterns.

Daily Cardio Load and Energy Score also helps users consider how recovery may influence their day. If sleep has been poor and Energy Score indicates lower readiness, a lighter workout or additional rest may be more appropriate than an intense training session.

Daily Cardio Load contributes to this by measuring accumulated cardiovascular strain. By calculating daily load and maximum training capacity, it recommends optimal training targets and rest times to ensure users reach their goals without risking burnout or injury.

By connecting sleep insights with activity data, users can make more informed decisions about when to push themselves and when to prioritize recovery. The goal is not to achieve perfect sleep or maximum energy every day, but to build a sustainable routine that balances movement with rest.

4. Monitor Activity and Heart Health

Staying active also means understanding how the body responds to exercise.

The Galaxy Watches tracks daily activity, including steps and supported workouts, helping users see how everyday movement contributes to their personal goals. Through Samsung Health, users can review their progress, recognize activity patterns and adjust their routines as needed.

Heart-rate and blood pressure monitoring during exercise offers additional insight into how the body responds to different activities and intensities.

These features support greater health awareness but do not replace medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Anyone experiencing chest pain, unusual shortness of breath or dizziness should stop exercising and seek appropriate medical care.

5. Make Wellness Part of Everyday Life

For FZHD, lifestyle content creator, consistency comes from creating an environment that makes healthy choices easier.

“Maintaining an active and healthy lifestyle is tough because of work demands, lack of motivation, and weather conditions. Fortunately, I have a friend who join me in training and encourage me to stick with my healthy habits.”

His experience highlights how motivation, supportive relationships and realistic routines can help people stay committed to their wellbeing. Check out how FZHD stays motivated with the Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra2 here:

Muhammad Shaffuan, fitness enthusiast and marathon runner, says: “Don’t put too much pressure on yourself to stay productive all the time. If the haze is keeping you indoors, take it as a chance to slow down a little and do things you normally don’t have time for. Even something simple like working out at home, watching a movie, reading or working on a personal project can help. Most importantly, listen to your body and take care of yourself. The haze won’t last forever, so just take it day by day!”

His ethos highlights that fitness is a life long journey filled with ups and downs, taking it day by day and moving bit by bit is the key to keeping a sustainable fitness lifestyle:

The connected experience of Galaxy Watch and Samsung Health brings these elements together, helping users discover indoor workouts, track daily activity, review sleep insights, monitor hydration, access supported health measurements, and provide additional motivation to keep going.

During hazy periods, Malaysians should continue monitoring official air-quality advisories, limiting outdoor exposure when conditions are unhealthy and following public-health guidance. Indoor exercise is not automatically safe if indoor air quality is also affected.

Ultimately, staying well during the haze does not have to mean doing more. It can mean moving indoors, drinking water regularly, eating balanced meals, getting sufficient sleep or taking a few minutes to stretch.

With Galaxy Watch and Samsung Health supporting these everyday choices, small, consistent steps can help Malaysians maintain their wellness routines until outdoor activities can safely resume.

Sleep Coaching Becomes Easier to Start and More Personalized

While sleep tracking tells users how they slept, sleep coaching helps them sleep better by turning personal sleep goals and data into daily habits.

Samsung has made it even easier to begin sleep management. Users can now initiate Sleep Coaching with just three days of data within the past two weeks instead of seven days in a month.

During setup, users complete a survey on sleep regularity, sleep interruptions, alcohol and caffeine intake and subjective sleep satisfaction. With these survey responses and three days of sleep data, the app assigns a personalized Sleep Animal symbol and builds a tailored four- to eight-week coaching program based on individual goals. As users progress, the program dynamically adapts its weekly recommendations to reflect changing sleep patterns, tracking daily sleep satisfaction and lifestyle shifts.

Informed by principles of behavioral sleep science, the program gives users daily habit checklists and sleep tips — making it easier to build healthier routines, such as avoiding screens an hour before bed, skipping late caffeine and stretching outdoors after waking up.

Users can also enjoy more intuitive and detailed analysis reports. The new pentagon-shaped Sleep Balance graph consolidates five key aspects of sleep indicators —sleep time, sleep regularity, awake time during the night, sleep satisfaction, and Energy Score²— to provide an at-a-glance view of sleep trends and areas that may warrant attention, based on data collected or inputted through sleep coaching.

Morning daily insight messages, which review the previous night’s sleep with helpful tips, integrate closely with weekly and final reports to provide a comprehensive view of sleep trends. By linking daily actions with this data-driven progress, Samsung Health helps users establish sustainable lifestyle habits to support everyday wellness.

Expanded Running Programs and Strava Routes Integration

In response to the growing popularity of running, Running Coach³ has been upgraded to deliver a more dynamic and connected training experience.

Training tiers have expanded from 10 to 12 levels. While users continue to receive a personalized training plan based on a 12-minute running test or their historical running data, this update introduces new levels to support intermediate and advanced runners. These dedicated training tiers enable them to set higher benchmarks, challenge themselves, and steadily improve their performance.

To celebrate achievements and sustain motivation, Running Coach introduces an enhanced social media sharing feature. Runners can seamlessly export their workout data into share-ready templates designed for various social platforms, making it easier to share milestones, personal records, and route highlights with their fitness communities.

Samsung continues to strengthen ecosystem connectivity through a partnership with Strava⁴, a global fitness platform. Users can import their favorite Strava Routes for running, trail running, and cycling directly into Samsung Health. This integration supports compatibility and user convenience across both platforms.

“Samsung Health’s personalized coaching empowers users to understand their health data, taking a step toward supporting everyday wellness,” said Hon Pak, Senior Vice President and Head of the Digital Health Team for the Mobile eXperience Business at Samsung Electronics. “We will continue to leverage the Galaxy ecosystem and our technology to build a trusted health platform.

These upgraded features will be progressively rolled out via Samsung Health app updates starting in October.⁵

1. Available on Samsung Health App v.6.24 or above and must be paired with Samsung Galaxy smartphones with Android OS 11 and above. Requires a minimum of three days of sleep data tracked within a seven-to-14-day period. Available via Galaxy Watch 4 series and later models, Samsung Galaxy Fit3 and later models, and Samsung Galaxy Ring. ︎
2. To check the Energy Score, the health data tracked from Samsung Galaxy Watch or Samsung Galaxy Ring must be synchronized with the Samsung Health App. The result is for your personal reference only and is not intended for medical purposes. ︎
3. Running Coach is available on Android phones (Android 10 or above) and requires Samsung Health app (v6.30.2 or above). Samsung account login required. Service available only with Galaxy Watch8 Series or later Galaxy Watch Series. ︎
4. Strava is available worldwide, excluding Belarus, China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Russia, parts of Ukraine, and South Korea. ︎
5. Some features may be supported through future software updates, and availability and timing may vary by market, model, and other conditions. ︎

Heart disease is the number one cause of death worldwide¹, which is why the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Heart Federation recognize Sept. 29 as World Heart Day. It is a reminder that the choices we make today can make a meaningful difference tomorrow.

These choices don’t have to be big. From choosing when to go to bed to making time for even just 30 minutes of exercise, the small choices we make every day add up to a healthier lifestyle. The good news is that Samsung Galaxy Watch can help you make proactive prevention part of daily life. By monitoring your sleep, activity level, stress and blood pressure, Galaxy Watch helps you better understand what’s happening in your body and what steps to take to ensure your heart is doing its job well.

Understanding Your Body at a Glance: Heart Health Score

The American Heart Association recommends looking at Life’s Essential 8² as key measures for improving and maintaining cardiovascular health: diet, exercise, sleep, weight, blood pressure, blood sugar, cholesterol and smoking cessation. But knowing what matters raises an important question: how do these factors change the choices we make every day?

Samsung Health’s Heart Health Score is designed to help you in this journey. It tracks and analyzes complex health indicators such as sleep duration, daily activity level, body composition and vascular load³, converting them into a single, simple score that anyone can intuitively understand and follow.

Think about what happens if you miss your daily exercise for a few days: your Galaxy Watch recognizes your moderate-to-high intensity activity level has decreased, reflects this change in a lower Heart Health Score, and makes a recommendation to go for a run. With convenient insights right from your wrist, Galaxy Watch delivers personalized insights that make it easier to recognize changes, understand your habits, and take the next step toward healthier ones.

▲ Galaxy Watch and Samsung Health provide effortless understanding of cardiovascular wellness through the Heart Health Score⁴.

Advanced Sensor Technology: From Measurement to Meaning

Samsung Galaxy Watches are equipped with an advanced BioActive Sensor which integrates three precision sensors in one: an optical heart rate sensor (PPG), an electrocardiogram sensor (ECG)⁵, and a bioelectrical impedance analysis sensor (BIA).

With calibration just once every four weeks using a home blood pressure monitor, you can easily check your blood pressure⁶ from your wrist anytime, anywhere. When you place your finger on the watch’s side electrode for just 30 seconds, the watch measures an electrocardiogram to detect signs of abnormal heartbeats like atrial fibrillation or ectopic beats. The Irregular Heart Rhythm Notification (IHRN)⁷ feature, which detects abnormal heart signals, monitors the user’s heart rhythm throughout the day and provides a proactive notification if abnormal signs are repeated.

Even small reminders like this have the power to save lives. In several countries, these notifications⁸ have led to early detection of risks such as atherosclerosis or myocardial infarction.

Around-the-Clock Care: How Galaxy Watch Proactively Monitors Your Health Even During Sleep

Your heart is a constant you can count on, and it works whether you’re awake or asleep. When you wear your Galaxy Watch to sleep, it analyzes five major vital signs: heart rate during sleep, heart rate variability¹⁰, respiratory rate, skin temperature and blood oxygen saturation. These signals are compared against your personal baseline.

When you wake up, your Galaxy Watch will send a notification if it detects meaningful deviations from your baseline. By highlighting meaningful changes early, it gives you an opportunity to rest, recover or seek medical guidance before small issues become larger concerns¹¹.

Heart to Heart: Connected Care That Adds Peace of Mind

Looking after your own heart is only one side of the story. From parents to partners, siblings to grandparents or even friends, the burden of caring for the hearts of those around you weighs heavily. Samsung Health’s Health Data Sharing¹³ function lightens the load by sharing agreed-upon data items (number of steps, blood pressure, heart rate, medication adherence, etc.) with loved ones in real time.

You can check if your parents who live far away have completed their daily walk or taken their prescribed medication on time, just as if you were right there with them.

World Heart Day coincides with the seasonal transition when chilly winds begin to blow in the mornings and evenings. As the temperature gap between day and night widens, blood vessels constrict, sharply increasing the risk of cardiovascular disease. The key to preventing heart disease lies not in reactive treatment, but in proactive habits of paying close attention to the subtle signals your body sends every day. Start managing your heart health with Galaxy Watch, a reliable health partner that stays with you around the clock.

1. Source: World Health Organization (WHO), “Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs)” Fact Sheet (July 31, 2025), “The top 10 causes of death” (Aug. 7, 2024). ︎
2. Source: American Heart Association (AHA), “Life’s Essential 8” (2022). ︎
3. Vascular Load feature measures the degree of stress placed on the cardiovascular system during sleep and displays the trend of change compared to a baseline value. It continuously analyzes changes during sleep to provide a comprehensive score. ︎
4. Image simulated for illustrative purposes. Actual UX/UI may be different. ︎
5. Electrocardiogram (ECG) feature records and analyzes subtle electrical signals of the heart when the user places a finger on Galaxy Watch’s top button for about 30 seconds, detecting atrial fibrillation (irregular and rapid quivering) and ectopic beats (premature irregular beats). ︎
6. Blood Pressure feature measures systolic and diastolic blood pressure by analyzing pulse waveforms with Galaxy Watch’s optical (PPG) sensor. An initial measurement using a separate cuff-type blood pressure monitor is required, and recalibration is needed every 4 weeks (28 days). ︎
7. Irregular Heart Rhythm Notification (IHRN) feature detects irregular patterns that may indicate atrial fibrillation through pulse monitoring and provides an early alert. ︎
8. Source: “When Every Second Counts: Galaxy Watch Series Health Features Help Save Lives,” Samsung Newsroom ︎
9. Image simulated for illustrative purposes. Actual UX/UI may be different. ︎
10. Heart Rate Variability (HRV) feature analyzes minute-to-minute variations in the intervals between heartbeats to show autonomic nervous system balance. It is automatically recorded during sleep and resting states. ︎
11. Heart Health Score and Vitals features are supported on the Samsung Health app (version 7.0 or higher). ︎
12. Image simulated for illustrative purposes. Actual UX/UI may be different. ︎
13. Health Data Sharing feature requires user consent, and users can independently choose which health data to share (including steps, workouts, sleep, weight, body composition, food intake, heart rate, stress, blood pressure, blood glucose, medication and vital signs). ︎
14. Image simulated for illustrative purposes. Actual UX/UI may be different. ︎

At Galaxy Unpacked July 2026 in London on July 22, Dr. Hon Pak, Senior Vice President and Head of the Digital Health Team, Mobile eXperience (MX) Business at Samsung Electronics, sat down with cognitive neuroscientist and science communicator Dr. Dong-seon Chang to explore how AI could make health management simpler and more connected.

Dr. Pak explained how the body changes from day to day and how AI can learn an individual’s daily rhythms and patterns to help transform fragmented health data into more meaningful, personalized guidance. He also introduced Samsung Health’s Connected Care vision, extending beyond devices and data to connect people — from healthcare professionals and families to partners across the broader health ecosystem.

Ultimately, the conversation pointed to a broader question of how society can embrace AI while keeping people at the center.

Watch the video below to learn more about Samsung’s vision for healthcare that is simpler, more connected, and human-centered.

The Health Forum held at Galaxy Unpacked July 2026 also shared Samsung’s Connected Care vision for the next chapter of digital health — a future where care moves from reactive treatment toward preventive, personalized, and connected experiences, supported by trusted health innovation and partnerships across the healthcare ecosystem. One technology that is helping power these new consumer experiences is the health foundation model.

Researchers from the Digital Health Team at Samsung Research America (SRA) are developing new AI technologies to continuously understand a person’s health state from biosignals, generate health insights, and offer appropriate health guidance.

Samsung researchers recently introduced two foundation models based on wearable data: xMAE (Physiology-Aware Masked Cross-Modal Reconstruction for Biosignal Representation Learning), which learns the temporal relationship between different biosignals, and HiMAE (Hierarchical Masked Autoencoder), which understands health patterns across different time scales in wearable time-series data. Both studies demonstrate advancement of health AI models that can better understand the physiological relationships and temporal structure of biosignals.

Samsung’s work on xMAE and HiMAE models was accepted to the International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), and the International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), respectively, highlighting the significance of this research.

Health Foundation Models That Read the Body’s Signals: Why They Matter for Health 

A health foundation model is an AI model that uses self-supervised learning to learn meaningful features from unlabeled biosignal data. After being pretrained on large-scale health data, the models can be applied to perform a wide range of downstream health tasks, including biosignal analysis, developing new or improved biomarkers, and health issue prediction.

xMAE AI model: Continuous Cardiac Insight from Wearables

An electrocardiogram (ECG) on wearables directly measures the electrical activity of the heart and is useful for measuring heart rate and heart rate variability, identifying abnormal heart rhythms and risks for conditions such as atrial fibrillation. ECG is highly accurate, but typically requires users to pause and take an active measurement. On the other hand, photoplethysmography (PPG) can indirectly measure cardiac function by detecting changes in blood flow and can be passively and continuously measured through sensors in wearable devices such as smartwatches.

The two signals originate from the same cardiac activity, but they appear with a certain time difference, much like thunder is heard after lightning is seen. xMAE is a biosignal pretraining framework designed to learn the temporal relationship between the two signals by reconstructing masked portions of the ECG signal using the more easily and continuously measured PPG signal. As a result, cardiovascular health-related features can be analyzed more precisely using PPG without requiring separate manual ECG measurements.

The researchers pretrained xMAE using approximately 9,400 hours of ECG and PPG data. The model outperformed unimodal biosignal models and existing multimodal learning methods in 15 of 19 evaluation tasks, including cardiovascular disease prediction, abnormal test-result detection, and sleep-stage classification. The study also confirmed the potential to use the learned features across different sensor devices, body locations and data-gathering environments.

HiMAE AI model: Reading the Body at Every Time Scale on the Device

Health data measured from wearable devices can reveal different information depending on the time scale at which it is analyzed. For example, short time segments can reveal rapidly changing signals such as heartbeats, while longer time segments can uncover patterns that accumulate over time, such as sleep or physical activity. This is similar to examining different information by zooming in and out of an image.

HiMAE is a self-supervised learning model that learns representation from wearable data across multiple time scales. It uses multiple encoders to analyze short and long segments separately, allowing the model to identify information required for each health task, such as heart rate analysis or sleep prediction, at the appropriate time scale. During training, the model reconstructs masked parts of the data. This enables it to learn key patterns in biosignals even when labeled data is limited.

A single pretrained HiMAE model handles classification, numerical prediction and data generation. The model achieved high performance while being smaller than existing models. It also improved computational efficiency to the point where it can produce results in less than one millisecond on a smartwatch-class central processing unit (CPU). Most importantly, HiMAE demonstrates the potential of on-device health foundation models for the first time — analyzing raw health signals in real time, without relying on cloud servers.

The Next Step Toward Connected Care

Together, xMAE and HiMAE, represent an advance in AI models that precisely understand the physiological relationships and temporal structures unique to biosignals. Both models aim to deliver precise, continuous, personalized health insights and to generalize across many health tasks from a single pretrained model. Hear more from the researchers behind this work below.

To explore that vision, Samsung hosted a Health Forum panel, “Rewriting the Rules of Preventive Health.” Moderated by Dr. Hon Pak, Senior Vice President and Head of the Digital Health Team, Mobile eXperience (MX) Business at Samsung Electronics, the session brought together leaders across nutrition, fitness, clinical research and AI to examine how technology can close the gap between knowing and doing in everyday health.

(From left) Otávio Penatti, Kevin Duffy, Moderator Dr. Hon Pak. Rohit Ail and Kartik Poria

The Paradox — and the “Missing Miles” of Health

Opening the discussion, Dr. Pak described a paradox at the heart of modern health: innovation and technology today has been transformational and accelerating, yet chronic disease continues to rise around the world.

“We live in the most measured era in human history — billions of people track their sleep, their stress, their heart rate every single day. And yet chronic disease keeps rising. More data, it turns out, hasn’t resulted in better health.”

He framed the disconnect as two “missing miles.” The first mile is detection and monitoring: much of what shapes our health happens outside the clinic and until recently, continuous monitoring was neither available nor connected to the physician. The last mile is action: even after a diagnosis and a care plan, it is the individual who has to act day after day — and life is busy and change is hard.

Dr. Hon Pak

Samsung, Dr. Pak argued, is uniquely positioned to close both gaps. With technology that stays with people throughout their daily lives — across wearables, mobile phones and a connected ecosystem — Samsung can understand not just raw biometric numbers, but the context behind them.

“We don’t just see a number — we see what’s around it: whether this is a moment you’re ready to change something or a moment you need a bit of support. Being there, at the point where personal decisions actually get made, is hard for a hospital or any other company to measure or act upon.”

But no single company can do this alone. That, he said, is why Samsung is building Connected Care together with partners — closing the first and last mile to scale prevention, with AI as the enabler across both. He introduced the three focus areas that would structure the conversation: everyday behavior, clinical credibility and privacy and advanced AI and research.

Everyday Behavior: Closing the Last Mile at the Dinner Table and the Gym

Diet and exercise are two of the biggest levers on long-term health — and two of the most within our control. They are also, Dr. Pak noted, where the gap between knowing and doing is widest.

Kartik Poria, Head of Product at Samsung Food, located that gap in a moment everyone recognizes.

“It’s Tuesday, six o’clock. You’re tired, you’re staring into the fridge and everything you know about eating well loses to whatever’s quickest. That moment is what we’re going after — because what you eat, day after day, is one of the biggest levers we have on preventing chronic disease.”

He described how Samsung Health and Samsung Food are coming together to tackle two halves of the same problem: Samsung Health surfaces what is happening beneath the surface — indicators such as meal logs, BMI, the Antioxidant Index and the AGEs Index — while Samsung Food’s global recipe library facilitates meal planning and its food intelligence reflect how people actually like to eat. Sitting on top is a nutrition experience grounded in behavior change science rather than tracking alone — learning a person’s habits and working with them so the healthier pattern becomes the easier one.

“We’re not adding another thing to manage — we’re making the healthy choice the easy one, for the night you’ve got the energy to cook and the night you don’t.”

Kartik Poria from Samsung Food

Turning to movement, Kevin Duffy, CEO of iFIT, described exercise as foundational to both physical and mental wellbeing and explained how iFIT’s expert-led programs are becoming more accessible through Samsung Health.

“Exercise is vital for both physical and mental wellbeing — cardiovascular health, strength, mobility, sleep quality, stress management.”

Through Samsung Health, users can discover and subscribe to iFIT’s premium fitness programs, while iFIT workouts integrate with Galaxy Watch so users can track key metrics during guided sessions. With Fitness Index, they receive a holistic view of their physical fitness in a single, easy-to-understand score, with personalized recommendations. Looking ahead, Duffy pointed to Samsung’s Health Assistant as a way to bring a user’s Fitness Index, goals and activity history together to surface the most relevant workout at the right moment.

“Exercise is not just about being active — it’s about understanding your body, building sustainable habits and having the right guidance at the right time. By combining iFIT’s expert-led experiences with Samsung Health’s connected insights, we can help more people make movement a meaningful part of their everyday lives.”

Kevin Duffy from iFIT

But content and insights alone, Dr. Pak noted, don’t close the last mile. The harder question is how to move from engagement to activation. Samsung designs for real life, recognizing that people slip and miss goals most of the time — and that those moments are precisely when timely, well-contextualized support matters most.

The real measure, he argued, is not how often the system nudges someone, but how many healthy actions actually happen — a doctor’s low-salt advice quietly showing up as items in a grocery cart or a workout that meets a person where they actually are that day. Poria added that this is the true shift: from nudging people to changing the choice in front of them.

Clinical Credibility and Privacy: Trust Earned Through Evidence

Dr. Pak turned next to the question of trust — noting that wearable data is now something most clinicians have seen, but far fewer have been able to build into their day-to-day care. Closing that gap, he said, is a matter of evidence, workflow and trust.

Rohit Ail, Head of the Technology Incubation Lab at Samsung R&D Institute UK (SRUK), spoke to how his team works to generate clinical evidence in real-world settings.

“Our goal is to meet the standards expected by clinicians, researchers and regulatory bodies and that means generating evidence in real-world clinical environments. This commitment builds on Samsung’s growing body of clinical research and validation evidence.”

He referenced ongoing collaborations across Europe, including partnerships with the NHS and clinical validation studies with leading hospitals. With San Cecilio University Hospital in Spain and Gemelli in Italy, Samsung is working on identifying and managing cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk using AI and decision-support technologies; with Fondazione IRCCS in Italy, the focus is on understanding and addressing the late effects faced by adolescent and young adult (AYA) cancer survivors through AI-based digital phenotyping and a non-invasive, holistic approach.

On privacy, Ail noted that Samsung considers user data to belong to the user, with Samsung acting as custodian.

“Trust begins with protecting users’ data. Samsung takes a three-layer approach: Samsung Knox for device-level security, GDPR-compliant infrastructure and alignment with the European Health Data Space framework.”

He added that SRUK has also developed a Decentralized Clinical Trial framework, in which participant identities remain under the control of healthcare organizations and data is pseudonymized from the outset.

Rohit Ail from Samsung R&D Institute UK

Advanced AI and Research: Reading the Body’s Signals

If everyday reach and clinical trust are two of the three pillars, intelligence is what binds them together. Dr. Pak introduced foundation models as a genuine turning point — a shift from population averages to something truly personal.

Otávio Penatti, Head of the Health AI R&D Team at Samsung R&D Institute Brazil (SRBR), explained what a foundation model for health actually means.

“A health foundation model is an AI model that uses self-supervised learning to learn meaningful features from unlabeled biosignal data. At Samsung, we are advancing health foundation model research across multiple global research teams, combining expertise in biosignal intelligence, wearable AI and personalized health insights. Building on the success of large language models, we can now interpret complex biosignals — such as ECG, ACC and PPG — not as isolated data points, but as a structured biological language. These signals can be measured through wearable devices in everyday situations and by applying foundation models to understand these biological patterns, we have the potential to provide more accurate predictions and continuous, personalized health insights.”

Otávio Penatti from Samsung R&D Institute Brazil

Three Focus Areas, One Goal

To close, Dr. Pak asked each panelist for a one-sentence vision of Connected Care in the era of AI five years from now.

• Kartik Poria (Samsung Food): “In five years, eating well won’t run on willpower — it’ll feel like having a chef and a dietitian in your pocket, turning what your body needs into what’s for dinner, day after day.”
• Kevin Duffy (iFIT): “A coach that knows your body and adapts every workout to who you are that day.”
• Rohit Ail (SRUK): “Care that clinicians trust and patients control — evidence-based and private by design.”
• Otávio Penatti (SRBR): “AI that understands the body’s language and acts before problems begin.”

Dr. Pak closed by tying the threads together: everyday behavior, clinical trust and personal AI — three focus areas, one goal of closing the first and last mile to scale prevention while meeting people where they are. “The future of health is connected, trusted and proactive — and it’s a road we’re glad to be traveling together.”

During the panel, Hon Pak, Head of the Digital Health Team for the Mobile eXperience (MX) Business at Samsung Electronics, joined four other speakers: David Lee, Head of Samsung Next; Mike McSherry, CEO of Xealth; Alina Su, CEO of Generation Lab; and Michael Dubrovsky, CEO of SiPhox Health. Together, they presented a blueprint for the future of healthcare to an audience of approximately 1,000 global attendees.

Serving as the moderator, David Lee emphasized the critical role of partnership. “The future of health cannot be built by one company alone,” Lee said. “It must be forged through an open ecosystem of collaboration among diverse innovators.”

Building an Open Health Ecosystem

Samsung possesses a diverse portfolio of devices and platforms, spanning from semiconductors to mobile phones, wearables, home appliances and TVs. The company leverages its economies of scale to cultivate a robust, collaborative ecosystem with numerous partners across each of its business sectors.

By integrating Samsung devices with partner solutions within this open ecosystem, Xealth, Generation Lab and SiPhox Health are accelerating the realization of connected care. This healthcare vision aims to help users lead healthier, more vibrant lives through proactive wellness management powered by Samsung’s connected device ecosystem.

Hon Pak highlighted the scale of Samsung’s reach during the discussion. “Samsung Health supports more than 77 million monthly active users,[1] and the SmartThings platform connects 460 million users,”[2] Pak said.

Samsung holds a strong advantage as a trusted brand within the household, the central setting for daily life and wellness. “By connecting our device ecosystem around the home via SmartThings, we can innovate the health experience where it matters most, at a time when health is shifting to the home — a space in which prevention can happen at scale,” Pak added.

To support this transition, Samsung has integrated a wide variety of devices — including home appliances, TVs and compatible third-party devices — into its SmartThings platform. This enables a broad spectrum of services that range from personalized automation routines to family and pet care.

Accelerating Innovation Through Partnerships

The panelists identified Samsung’s established ecosystem and open approach to collaboration as key strengths.

Alina Su of Generation Lab emphasized the value of this partnership. “What has been most exciting is Samsung’s genuine openness and distribution. There’s real scale and technical capability — but there’s also a willingness to collaborate, to co-create, and to move quickly with partners,” Su said. “When you combine that with the devices people already use every day, you can bring innovation to people’s lives far faster than you could independently.”

Michael Dubrovsky of SiPhox Health also explained the benefits of the collaboration. “Samsung brings the device ecosystem already living in people’s homes and on their bodies,” Dubrovsky said. “SiPhox adds the diagnostic layer that has always been missing from that picture. Together, continuous device data and continuous biomarker data create a truly complete health picture that has never existed outside a clinical setting.”

Currently, Generation Lab provides a solution to help users easily check biological age and actively manage aging at home, while SiPhox Health offers a service that enables active health management through hospital-grade blood tests in each household.

Mike McSherry of Xealth shared a vision for providing a seamless, continuous healthcare solution by bridging the gap between clinical care in hospitals and daily wellness management through deep integration with Samsung.

Empowering Open Collaborations and Ensuring Robust Security

In addition to strategic partner collaborations, Samsung has built an open ecosystem for the wider developer and researcher community. Utilizing the Samsung Health Software Development Kit (SDK) Suite, they can easily create innovative wellness services leveraging advanced sensor technology and the health platform. This allows Samsung Health users to experience useful new features more quickly.

Protecting these experiences is Samsung Knox, a proprietary defense-grade security solution integrated across various consumer touchpoints, such as mobile devices, home appliances and TVs. With Knox, users can confidently manage their sensitive information within the Samsung ecosystem.

Looking at the next five years of healthcare in the context of the AI era, Pak concluded, “A daily companion that knows who I am, as well as what I need and when, will help me achieve my health goals seamlessly through lifestyle behaviors and connected innovative partner services.”

[1] The number of Samsung Health users is based on the global monthly active users (MAU) as of April 2026.

[2] The number of SmartThings users is based on the global registered users as of May 2026.

Held under the theme “Open Invitation to a Healthier Tomorrow,” Samsung’s exhibition demonstrates how connecting devices, services and partnerships can support proactive health management inside and outside the home. Samsung’s connected care vision is realized through Samsung Health, the company’s integrated health platform, which delivers personalized wellness experiences across five key health areas: sleep, activity, nutrition, mental health and vital signs.

“Samsung delivers unique connected care solutions that encompass the Samsung ecosystem of smartphones, wearables, home appliances and TVs, as well as our open partnerships,” said Stephanie Choi, Executive Vice President and Head of Global Brand Center at Samsung Electronics. “We continue to work to provide various health solutions through open partnerships to firmly establish ourselves as a reliable AI-powered everyday health companion.”

The exhibition booth is organized into three zones:

• Media Façade: A video interpretation of the exhibition theme “Open Invitation to a Healthier Tomorrow,” beautifully integrated with Samsung Health’s five core wellness areas.
• Samsung’s Connected Care Ecosystem: A comprehensive look at the connected care solutions and core services.
• Open Care Lab: A space highlighting partner collaboration and startup incubation that also includes an interactive zone.

Samsung’s Connected Care Ecosystem Zone serves as the main area of the exhibition and demonstrates how Galaxy smartphones, Galaxy Watches and the Samsung Health app seamlessly connect to enable proactive wellness management. The zone also offers a glimpse into the future of daily health management, powered by Samsung Health’s latest features — including tracking via Heart Health Score and Vitals, alongside enhanced workout metrics such as Daily Cardio Load, introduced in the new 7.0 update.¹

In this zone, Samsung is presenting its future digital healthcare blueprint, which aims to bridge wellness and clinical care by integrating Samsung’s technology with Xealth, the U.S. digital health platform the company acquired last year.

Xealth provides a platform that enables medical professionals to comprehensively assess patient conditions, prescribe and recommend digital healthcare solutions and monitor health in real time. By connecting Galaxy smartphones and wearables with the Xealth platform, Samsung plans to develop a solution that empowers both clinical teams and patients to actively manage health together, even outside of a hospital setting.

The company is also showcasing its Bespoke AI Refrigerator Family Hub, which enables smart diet management. AI Food Manager² tracks expiration dates and sends timely alerts before ingredients reach the use-by date set by the user. Additionally, the FoodNote³ widget analyzes ingredient data stored and used over the past week, providing personalized insights into the user’s most frequently consumed food items.

Samsung is also introducing a pet care solution that helps users monitor potential health issues at home. Through a collaboration with the pet health management solution Lifet, users can take a photo with their mobile device, which AI then analyzes for signs associated with issues such as certain dental problems, patellar luxation and cataracts.⁴

Seamlessly connected through Samsung’s smart home platform, SmartThings, the solutions presented in the Connected Care Ecosystem Zone safeguard personal data with Knox, Samsung’s proprietary security solution.

The booth’s Open Care Lab features a range of partner solutions, including the AI Beauty Screen developed in collaboration with Amorepacific, a leading Korea-based beauty company; Visual Meditation, a service exclusive to Samsung TVs developed in collaboration with CUZ; and an AI-based skin and scalp analysis solution by Becon, which was founded through Samsung’s in-house venture project, C-Lab.

Visitors can book an appointment for a personalized K-beauty experience using the AI Beauty Screen to assess their skin condition and receive a tailored lip makeup application. Attendees can also experience the Visual Meditation service on a Samsung TV.

On June 19, a panel discussion will feature prominent speakers, including Hon Pak, Head of Mobile eXperience (MX) Digital Health Team at Samsung Electronics; David Lee, Head of Samsung Next; Mike McSherry, CEO of Xealth; Alina Su, Co-founder and CEO of Generation Lab; and Michael Dubrovsky, Co-founder and CEO of SiPhox Health.

Speaking to a global audience, the panel will discuss how Samsung’s open innovation approach and collaborative partner ecosystem can help bring its connected care vision to life.

1. Some features may be rolled out via future software updates and availability varies by market, device model and other variables. ︎
2. A Wi-Fi connection and Samsung account are required. If a food item is not recognizable, it may be listed as an unknown item. AI Vision cannot identify or list any food items in the freezer. Recognition uses AI models that may be updated periodically to help improve performance. User may need to manually check and adjust the list to ensure its accuracy. ︎
3. Users may need to manually check and adjust the food item list to ensure its accuracy. ︎
4. SmartThings app and Pet Care service must be installed. Supported features and availability of services may vary depending on the country, region, device model and software version and may be subject to change without prior notice. AI health analysis feature is provided through the Lifet solution by Elevenliter and it does not replace professional veterinary diagnosis. ︎

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. today announced a major update to the Samsung Health app, transforming the upcoming Galaxy Watch into a proactive, intelligent health partner. Starting June 8, Samsung will begin rolling out the app update to showcase the key health features included in the upcoming Galaxy Watch. The update[1] makes daily health management effortless by translating complex biometric data — from overnight sleep to daily activity — into simple, actionable guidance.

“Samsung Health is evolving to connect health data measured by Galaxy Watch with AI-based insights, enabling users to understand their physical and mental condition more easily and intuitively,” said Hon Pak, Senior Vice President and Head of the Digital Health Team for the Mobile eXperience (MX) Business at Samsung Electronics. “Samsung Electronics will continue to expand proactive and personalized health management experiences based on the connected Galaxy ecosystem and digital health innovations.”

This advancement is a key milestone in Samsung’s overarching vision for a truly AI-powered health platform designed to help users stay ahead of their health. The newly announced health features will first be available on the upcoming Galaxy Watch.

Features Transforming Galaxy Watch into an Intelligent Health Partner

The Samsung Health update comes with the following features:

• Vitals: A Better Understanding of the Body’s Signals — Previously, Samsung Health monitored specific health metrics to help measure users’ daily Energy Score. Now, Samsung Health is taking this a step further. When users wake up, the new Vitals feature analyzes five key overnight bio-signals — heart rate, heart rate variability, respiratory rate, skin temperature and blood oxygen — against their true resting baseline. It sends notifications only when it detects meaningful deviations, helping users determine if they need more rest or are fighting an illness, without causing alert fatigue.

• Heart Health Score: Improved Long-Term Wellness — Last year, Samsung introduced Vascular Load to help users monitor vascular stress and adopt a more holistic approach to health. Today, that vision evolves into the Heart Health Score. This single daily metric takes the insights previously found in Vascular Load — such as sleep, stress and activity — and combines them with body composition data. The result is a unified score that clearly identifies the habits impacting users’ long-term well-being, giving them immediate clarity on their heart health.

• Daily Cardio Load: Smarter Cardiovascular Training — When users are deciding how hard to push during aerobic exercise, Daily Cardio Load measures accumulated cardiovascular strain. By calculating daily load and maximum training capacity, it recommends optimal training targets and rest times to ensure users reach their goals without risking burnout or injury.

• Fitness Index: Seamless Progress Tracking — The Fitness Index ensures exercise routines are working by analyzing metrics like heart rate, VO₂ max (a key measure of aerobic fitness) and daily steps against users’ peers. By clearly identifying individual physical strengths and weaknesses, it delivers tailored content and personalized goals so users can make continuous, targeted improvements.

New Samsung Health Design for a Simplified, Personal Experience

To make these proactive insights easy to find, Samsung Health introduces a streamlined layout organized into five core pillars: Sleep, Activity, Nutrition, Mindfulness and Vitals. Within the Home screen, users can now easily access their daily wellness tips alongside their AI-powered Energy Score. This centralized view removes guesswork from health management, allowing users to quickly understand how different aspects of their routine interconnect at a single glance.

Upgraded Capabilities for Proactive Wellness

Samsung Health is also significantly advancing the core features users already rely on, delivering deeper personalization with greater precision. As users navigate their day, Antioxidant Index now provides an even clearer roadmap of their nutritional intake. With new trend charts and daily history logs, it visually connects users’ dietary choices to physical responses over time. Behind the scenes, the AGEs index has been enhanced to quietly work in the background, capturing automatic overnight measurements to build a long-term picture of how lifestyle choices accumulate in users’ bodies. This helps users uncover health insights that truly matter for their well-being.

Comprehensive wellness extends to external environments, as well, with Samsung offering a brand-new Hearing Health feature that integrates seamlessly across the Galaxy ecosystem. By monitoring surrounding ambient noise through Galaxy Watch, it delivers personalized analytics to help protect the user’s ears — whether they are on a loud commute or dialing up the music during a workout.

Together, these advanced refinements and new ecosystem-connected features turn everyday data into simple, practical guidance, setting the perfect stage for the future of Samsung Health.

A Seamlessly Connected Health Ecosystem

Samsung’s expansive ecosystem unlocks the true power of these new features, seamlessly managing health across users’ Galaxy mobile phones and connected devices. This frictionless integration ensures that personalized insights are always accessible, providing a unified view of user well-being. These advancements offer a glimpse into the future of Samsung Health — a future that will be fully realized with the launch of Samsung’s next generation of Galaxy Watches, engineered to bring this proactive intelligence to life like never before.

[1] New health features are for wellness only, not for the diagnosis or treatment of any medical condition. If concerned about health, be sure to see a medical professional. Available on Android phones (Android 10 or above) and requires the Samsung Health app (v7.0 or above). Samsung account login required. Certain features may require user activity and data accumulation over time to enable personalized results. Feature availability, supported devices, and rollout timing may vary by market, model, and other factors and are subject to change.

This powerful combination of technology and talent has already reaped rewards. After securing a dominant win at the2025 Chicago Marathonand shattering the half-marathon world record this March in Lisbon, the 25-year-old is now targeting success at the2026 London Marathon.

▲ Jacob Kiplimo trains for the London Marathon with his Galaxy Watch8.

To markWorld Health Day (WHD) 2026on April 7, Samsung Newsroom asked him to detail his data-driven training regime, which embodies this year’s WHD slogan, “Together for health. Stand with science.”

With exclusive access to hisSamsung Healthmetrics, we take an inside look into his grueling training program, which has seen him cover over 100 km in just one week. Discover how insights led him to adjust his training for optimal recovery and how even a “rest day” can include a 3 km run.

▲ Screenshots from Kiplimo’s Samsung Health app show his varied training routine, including light jogs and long-distance runs.

Q. Congratulations on your recent world record at the 2026 Lisbon Half Marathon. What’s the secret to your success?

There’s no secret. It’s just about discipline. You have to work hard, be extremely focused, and manage your energy — knowing when to rest and when to push harder. But honestly, the most important part is that you have to really want what you’re working toward. I wouldn’t have broken the world record if I didn’t follow that formula.

Q. You finished second at the 2025 London Marathon and are now preparing to go one step further at this year’s event. What role has your Galaxy Watch8 played in your training?

My coach doesn’t live in Uganda, so my Galaxy Watch8 has basically become his personal assistant here. Even though he’s not with me, he can get real-time analysis and reports on my running form through theRunning Analysisfeature in Samsung Health. We track my heart rate and pay close attention to my pace for each kilometer. During the harder sessions, I also monitor the asymmetry readings to see if I’m overcompensating on one side so I can avoid strain. Contact time is another key aspect I keep an eye on, making small adjustments to my form to ensure every stride is as efficient as possible. I always try to improve my running economy, so these insights are incredibly helpful.

▲ Kiplimo’s Samsung Health data from March 13–19 reveals how he ramps up his training routine throughout the week.

Q. Looking at your recent Samsung Health data, we can see some clear patterns in your training routine. Tell us about your regime.

Consistency is key, but athletes must not be obsessed with training. What many people don’t realize is that rest is equally as important as physical training. To compete at your best, you need to be able to maximize your energy, and the only way to do that is through consistent rest. But “rest” doesn’t always mean no training. A rest day can mean running 3 km instead of 40 km. You have to be consistent in what you’re doing, but you also need to listen to your body and know when to slow down. Technology can help a lot with this.

Q. Can you give us an example of how a specific insight from the Samsung Health app led you to adapt your training program?

The decision to run 3 km instead of 40 km that I just mentioned was a true story. After experiencing some lingering soreness during a recent 24 km run, I decided to turn what was intended to be a 40 km run into a light 3 km jog to ensure I could recover and have the stamina to get through 40 km another day. The Samsung Health app was very helpful for me here. It kept me informed so I could allow my body to fully recover and prevent a potential injury or burnout.

Q. We’ve seen how a professional runner like yourself uses data to reach their goals. What advice would you give to someone who is just starting their running journey, and how can the Running Coach feature get them on the right track?

For beginners, it is very important to ease into things and be patient. You will build up stamina over time; it’s about knowing when to push yourself and when to stop. Not everyone has a personal coach with them to tailor a training plan. But theRunning Coachfeature provides customized programs to help even beginners train for a marathon. It tells you exactly what you should be doing during a run, motivates you and helps you improve. New runners are fortunate to have this fantastic technology which can guide them every step of the way. It’s also great for more experienced runners looking to take on a full marathon as it provides structured training programs.

Q. On World Health Day, the message is “Together for health, stand with science.” How does this relate to your own philosophy?

Science helps me throughout my training. I don’t know where I would be without the ability to track data on my Galaxy Watch8. I use that science to shape my daily routine. Science and technology help me perform at my best, and I believe they can do the same for anyone.

From a young runner in Uganda to a world-record holder, Kiplimo proves what happens when relentless dedication meets smart technology. Whether you are an elite athlete striving for the podium or someone taking your first steps towards a healthier lifestyle, Galaxy Watch8 provides actionable insights to help you build healthier habits and reach your goals.