Wearable Infrastructure Setup With Open Wearables: From Zero to Production Data in Weeks

What This Service Is

When a HealthTech company needs to add wearable data to their product and isn't already running an integration layer, this is where an engagement starts.

The problem is well-defined: your product needs health data from Apple Health, Garmin, Oura, Whoop, and similar devices. Building each integration from scratch (separate OAuth flows, sync schedulers, data normalization for each provider) is a multi-month engineering project before any product feature gets built on top. Using a SaaS platform solves the time problem but introduces per-user fees that compound as you scale.

A self-hosted open-source platform is a third option: it handles the provider complexity, gives you a unified API, and runs on your infrastructure at infrastructure cost, not per-user cost. We built Open Wearables as that platform. Our setup service deploys it, configures it, and hands it to your team ready to build on. If you're already on Terra or another platform, the migration path is a separate engagement.

What Gets Deployed

The Open Wearables Platform

Open Wearables runs as a containerized service on your cloud. We deploy on AWS, GCP, or Azure, in the region that fits your compliance requirements (US regions for HIPAA workloads, EU regions for GDPR).

The platform includes:

• Provider connection management (OAuth flows, token refresh, revocation handling)
• Sync scheduler (background data collection from each connected provider)
• Data normalization engine (unified schema across all devices)
• Developer dashboard (sync health, provider status, user connections, data pipeline monitoring)
• Webhook system (push notifications to your backend when new data arrives)
• REST API (your backend queries normalized health data)

Deployment uses infrastructure-as-code. The configuration is documented and owned by your team from the first day.

The Mobile SDK

We provide React Native and Flutter SDKs built on Open Wearables. We integrate the relevant SDK into your mobile app.

What the SDK handles on the mobile side: the device authorization UI (the screen where users connect their wearable accounts), background sync scheduling, on-device data collection for HealthKit and Health Connect (iOS and Android), and the connection to your Open Wearables backend.

For Apple Health (HealthKit), the integration is on-device. The SDK requests health data permissions, collects the data in the background, and pushes it to your Open Wearables backend. No third-party cloud sees your users' Apple Health data.

For Google Health Connect, the same pattern: on-device SDK, background collection, data sent to your backend.

For REST API providers (Garmin, Oura, Whoop, Polar, Suunto, Strava), the OAuth flow runs through your Open Wearables backend. The SDK handles the in-app OAuth browser and token handoff.

Provider Connections

Every provider your product supports gets configured in Open Wearables. This involves registering your application with the provider's developer program, configuring OAuth credentials, testing the full authorization and sync flow end-to-end, and validating the normalized data output against your expected schema.

For devices not yet in the Open Wearables provider library, we build custom integrations that connect to the same unified API. Your app code doesn't change when a new device type is added.

HIPAA Compliance Configuration

For products handling protected health information, the deployment includes:

• Business Associate Agreement (BAA) signing with your cloud provider
• Encryption at rest (AES-256) and in transit (TLS 1.3) configured from day one
• Audit logging for all data access events
• Access controls and role-based permissions on the API
• Data retention policies matching your compliance requirements

HIPAA configuration is not a separate track. It's part of the standard deployment. The architecture is compliant from the first environment, not retrofitted after.

Week-by-Week: What the Engagement Looks Like

The typical engagement runs two to six weeks. Here's what happens in each phase.

Week 1: Architecture and Environment Setup

We review your existing app architecture, backend structure, and cloud environment. We identify the right deployment configuration: cloud provider, region, instance sizing based on your current and projected user volume.

Open Wearables gets deployed to your staging environment. The developer dashboard comes up. Basic connectivity between the platform and your backend is tested. The first provider (usually Apple Health, since it's the most iOS app-critical) gets configured and tested end-to-end.

By the end of week one, you can connect an Apple Health test account to your staging environment and see normalized data flowing to your backend.

Week 2: Provider Connections and SDK Integration

Remaining providers get connected and tested sequentially. Each provider requires its own OAuth application setup, credential configuration, and end-to-end sync test.

The mobile SDK integration happens in parallel: the SDK gets added to your app's codebase, the device connection flow gets implemented in your UI, and background sync gets configured for HealthKit and Health Connect.

This is the stage where provider-specific edge cases surface. Garmin's data schema for certain activity types. Oura's timestamp handling for sleep data. Whoop's HRV calculation methodology and how it maps to the unified schema. We handle these at integration time, not at production time.

Week 3+: Production Hardening and Handover

The deployment moves from staging to production. Monitoring and alerting go live: sync health dashboards, provider status monitoring, error rate tracking, data quality metrics.

Documentation is written for your engineering team: how to add a new provider, how to query the API, how the normalization schema works, how to interpret sync health data. The goal is that your team can maintain and extend the integration without us after handover.

The final deliverable: a production environment where your users can connect their wearable devices, normalized health data flows to your backend from all connected providers, and your engineering team has the knowledge to own it.

What You Need to Provide

Running this engagement requires access from your side:

• Staging and production cloud environment access (we need to deploy and configure)
• Mobile app codebase access for SDK integration
• Developer accounts or ability to create them for provider programs (Garmin, Oura, Whoop, etc.)
• A technical contact who can review architecture decisions and approve deployments

You don't need wearable expertise on your team. You need someone who understands your app architecture and can make access available. Everything else is ours.

After Setup: What Ongoing Maintenance Requires

Open Wearables runs on your infrastructure. Keeping it running well at scale requires attention to a specific set of things: provider API changes that break integrations, sync job failures that need diagnosis, platform updates that include security patches, and performance tuning as user volume grows.

Teams with strong DevOps capability handle this internally. Teams that want Momentum to manage it can engage our Platform Optimization and Support service.

See: Wearable Platform Operations: What Enterprise Support Looks Like After You Launch

Cost Reference: Setup vs. Building Direct

For context on the economic argument:

Building Apple Health integration from scratch (HealthKit SDK, background delivery, data normalization, edge case handling): four to eight weeks of senior iOS engineering. Building Garmin on top: add two to four weeks. Oura and Whoop: add two to three weeks each.

A six-provider implementation built from scratch: approximately 10 to 20 weeks of senior engineering time, before any product feature is built on top of the data. Plus the ongoing maintenance tax (provider API changes, OS updates, new device support) every year after.

The Open Wearables infrastructure setup engagement delivers the same six-provider coverage in two to six weeks. The implementation investment is one-time. Infrastructure costs run $600 to $6,000 per year at 10,000 users, not per-user fees.

A Note on Platform Choice

This article describes greenfield infrastructure setup using Open Wearables. If you're already on a SaaS wearable platform (Terra, Vital, Rook, or similar) and not ready to migrate, Momentum works on top of those too. We build health scores, AI features, and product development on whatever infrastructure you're currently running, and we deliver it in a migration-ready architecture. If and when you decide to move to self-hosted infrastructure, the transition is a scoped project rather than a rebuild.

Starting a Setup Engagement

The first conversation covers your product, your current architecture, the providers you need, and your compliance requirements. From that, we scope the engagement: which providers, what timeline, what the deployment configuration looks like.

Talk to the wearables team at Momentum