The emergence of concierge health

We’re seeing a new industry take shape: specialized, premium health-related services. It started with digital tracking, led to wearables, and now comes as full-service concierge health service. Think a private medical team, fractionalized and made much more affordable.

At a time when tech companies are mapping our spending habits and streaming tastes, the real power play is quietly taking shape in our veins. A new class of startups is promising to draw your blood from the comfort of your living room, pair it with continuous data from wearables and AI‑driven insights, and deliver concierge‑style care at a fraction of what boutique clinics once charged. It's a shift as much cultural as it is clinical: a recognition that early detection and continuous monitoring can extend healthspan more than any miracle drug, and that people are willing to pay for the privilege.

A digital health checkup without waiting rooms

One of the breakouts is Function Health, a membership service co‑founded by direct‑to‑consumer pioneer Jonathan Swerdlin. For an annual fee of $499, members receive two comprehensive blood panels: a 100+ biomarker baseline test and a mid‑year follow‑up with 60+ markers. The panels cover everything from cardiovascular markers and hormones to nutrient levels and early cancer signals. Results flow into a dashboard that tracks trends over time, and clinicians summarize the findings with recommendations for diet, sleep, exercise and supplements. Function Health emphasises that its platform is not a healthcare provider; instead, it partners with national lab network Quest Diagnostics, allowing members to schedule tests at more than 2,000 locations in the U.S. or pay an additional fee for at‑home phlebotomy. The firm claims its panels offer five times the number of tests a typical primary‑care visit might provide. An optional full‑body MRI costs another $499, underscoring the company's ambition to give members a longitudinal view of their health.

While some see Function Health as a "Netflix for lab work," others view it as a gateway to a broader healthcare shift. Equinox partnered with Function last year to offer tests to gym members, and the company reports a waitlist in the hundreds of thousands. By bundling lab tests into a subscription, Function is betting that proactive health management becomes as routine as streaming services.

Superpower: concierge care at streaming‑service prices

If Function Health made lab testing more accessible, Superpower wants to democratize concierge medicine itself. In August 2025 the startup launched a $199 yearly membership that includes over 100 lab tests, personalized health scores and biological age benchmarks, access to a medical team, data‑integrated health plans, and simplified reports. The company notes that most standard panels check fewer than 20 biomarkers; Superpower's tests span hundreds of markers covering heart health, hormones, metabolism, inflammation and biological age. The app is backed by a medical advisory board with clinicians from Harvard, Stanford and Oxford.

Co‑founder Max Marchione frames the mission in populist terms: "We're on a mission to bring the best of health to millions… Just as tens of millions subscribe to affordable memberships for everyday essentials, we see a future where that same scale exists for a seminal health membership." Fellow co‑founder Jacob Peters argues that the "era of expensive, inaccessible healthcare is over" and that advanced preventive care should not cost thousands of dollars. To underscore the cultural momentum, Superpower's investor list reads like a festival lineup: NBA champion Giannis Antetokounmpo, DJ Steve Aoki, actress Vanessa Hudgens, investor Balaji Srinivasan and Sweetgreen founder Jonathan Neman. For about $17 a month, members can order blood tests from home or visit more than 3,000 Quest Diagnostics clinics. They receive a "superpower score," biological age and action plan, and can text clinicians year‑round for prescriptions or supplement guidance.

Superpower's bet is that commoditized lab work paired with concierge‑style coaching can scale far beyond the few thousand people who historically paid $10,000‑plus a year for boutique clinics. By decoupling preventive care from elite price tags, it aims to shift the locus of control from hospitals to consumers. The service also hints at a future in which metrics like biological age and inflammation score become as commonly discussed as steps and calories.

WHOOP and the fusion of wearables with lab work

Hardware players are taking notice. Fitness‑tracker company WHOOP announced WHOOP Advanced Labs in September 2025, combining wearable data with curated blood tests. Members can either upload past bloodwork or order a panel through Quest Diagnostics; subscription options range from $199 to $599 for four tests a year. The draw is integration: WHOOP's sensors capture continuous metrics like heart rate variability and sleep, while the blood tests add clinical markers such as lipid profiles, hormonal levels and metabolic indicators. An algorithm and clinicians then offer AI‑powered coaching and progress tracking.

WHOOP's launch underscores how wearables and lab diagnostics are converging. Rather than treat a sleep score as a siloed metric, WHOOP wants to correlate a dip in REM sleep with, say, elevated cortisol or iron deficiency, and then nudge users toward targeted interventions. Over 350,000 people joined the waitlist for Advanced Labs, suggesting strong appetite for a holistic view of health that blends real‑time and laboratory data.

The home as the new clinic

These services are part of a broader concierge‑health boom accelerated by remote work, pandemic‑era telehealth and rising frustration with traditional healthcare. Companies like Lifeforce, a longevity program, send licensed phlebotomists to your home to draw blood for 50+ biomarkers and provide quarterly telehealth consultations. They package supplements and hormone therapies into subscriptions, eliminating the need to visit a doctor's office. Similarly, European startups like Aniva and U.S. Myriad test for genetic predispositions and environmental toxins, shipping kits that let users mail back samples.

The appeal goes beyond convenience. Regular blood testing can reveal pre‑symptomatic risk factors: Function Health says its members often discover early signals for diabetes or heart disease, and Aniva reports that 63% of users find early diabetes risk factors while 44% detect elevated cardiovascular risk. Data‑rich insights empower individuals to modify diet, exercise or medication before a problem manifests clinically. With healthcare costs in the U.S. projected to exceed $18,000 per person by 2027, early interventions promise long‑term savings.

Second‑order implications

The rise of at‑home phlebotomy and concierge‑style apps has several implications:

• Data ownership and privacy become paramount when personal biomarker data sits on cloud servers. Companies must reassure users that their genomic or hormone data won't be sold to third parties. Regulators may demand explicit consent frameworks, as they did with genetic‑testing firms.

• Equity: While $199 is affordable compared with $10k concierge clinics, it's still out of reach for many. The risk is a two‑tiered health system where those who can afford subscriptions enjoy early interventions while others remain in reactive care.

• Clinical integration: Doctors will need to interpret increasingly complex data sets coming from patients. Not all lab anomalies warrant intervention, and overtesting can lead to unnecessary anxiety or treatments. The challenge is balancing empowerment with evidence‑based medicine.

• Insurance: If these services prove they can reduce hospitalizations by catching disease early, insurers may start reimbursing membership fees. That would accelerate adoption and further blur the lines between consumer wellness and medical care.

We’re carefully monitoring this trend, as these companies are growing rapidly, capturing attention, and offering incredibly valuable services to health-focused consumers. Whether they can demonstrate product-market fit at ultra scale remains to be seen.