I've gone through several versions of health tracking over the years. I wore a Fitbit. Then I moved to an Apple Watch. Eventually, I stopped wearing both.

It wasn't because I suddenly decided that tracking my activity wasn't useful. In fact, I still track it. I use the Health app on my iPhone to keep track of my steps, and my Peloton app can connect with that information so my workouts and daily activity aren't completely separate from one another.

What changed was how much access I wanted my technology to have to my attention. When I wore a smartwatch, every text, phone call and notification seemed to arrive on my wrist. I found myself looking down at my watch when I wanted to be paying attention to what was happening around me.

There was something strange about wearing a device intended, in part, to support my well-being while also feeling like it was constantly pulling me away from the moment I was actually living.

So I kept some of the information and let go of some of the noise. And that experience came back to me when I read about where digital health research appears to be heading.

For years, digital wellness has become increasingly sophisticated at collecting information about us. Steps, heart rate, workouts, sleep, blood oxygen, recovery, calories and even indicators of stress can now be measured by something we wear, carry or keep beside the bed.

There are Fitbits and Apple Watches, Oura Rings and increasingly sophisticated sleep and fitness trackers. Even our phones collect health information, while apps can bring data from several different sources together in one place.

And some of this goes well beyond personal curiosity. Digital health information can play a role in structured wellness and healthcare programs, where participation or health data may help support access to fitness benefits, preventive programs, physical activity initiatives or other health-related services. There is real value in being able to collect information over time and see patterns that otherwise might be difficult to recognize.

But I think for many of us, the daily experience is much simpler. We look to see how many steps we got that day, whether we closed our rings, how well we slept or what our heart rate looked like during a workout. We have become very good at knowing our numbers.

The more interesting question may be what we do with them.

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There is something empowering about having access to information about our own health. Wearables, smartwatches, smart rings, fitness and recovery trackers, sleep technology and at-home medical monitors can help us see patterns we might otherwise miss. In some cases, that information may give us an early indication that something has changed and is worth paying attention to.

And the technology itself is becoming much more sophisticated. We are moving beyond devices that simply count steps or record workouts toward tools designed to monitor increasingly detailed information about what is happening inside the body. Nutromics, for example, is developing what it calls a “lab-on-a-patch,” using tiny microneedles and biosensors with the goal of continuously monitoring certain biomarkers in real time. The technology is still in development and has not yet received regulatory approval, but it offers an interesting glimpse at where health monitoring may be heading.

That makes access to information incredibly promising. But it also raises another question.

What happens once we have it?

A recent study gives us an interesting example of what it looks like when researchers move beyond simply tracking app use and examine whether a digital intervention changes behavior. In an 18-month randomized controlled trial involving 200 adults with obesity, researchers studied a mobile health behavior-change system designed to support weight loss and healthier habits.

After six months of using the system, participants showed improvements in several measures of eating behavior, including uncontrolled eating, emotional eating and binge eating. Those improvements were maintained during the longer follow-up period. The study doesn't tell us that every wellness app will change our behavior, but it does point to a more useful question: not simply whether we're using the technology, but whether using it helps us change something.

That question may become even more important as artificial intelligence becomes integrated into health and wellness technology. For a long time, our devices have primarily reported what already happened: how many steps we walked, how many hours we slept, what our heart rate was or how long we exercised.

The next generation of digital wellness tools has the potential to move beyond reporting those numbers and help us understand what they mean in the context of our own behavior. Instead of simply telling us that we didn't move enough today, a useful intervention might recognize that we've been sitting most of the afternoon and suggest that this could be a good time for a ten-minute walk.

It's a subtle difference, but an important one. One gives us another piece of information to absorb. The other potentially helps us turn that information into something we can actually do.

Perhaps that's a better standard for deciding whether a wellness tool deserves a place in our lives:

Does what it measures help me make a choice that supports my health?

You don't need another device or app to experiment with this idea. Look at whatever you already use, whether that's a watch, ring, phone, fitness app or sleep tracker, and choose one piece of information it regularly gives you.

Then ask yourself a simple question:

What do I actually do differently because I know this?

Maybe seeing your steps reminds you to take an evening walk. Perhaps noticing several nights of poor sleep encourages you to pay more attention to your bedtime. Your workout history might motivate you to keep moving consistently. There may also be information you check regularly that doesn't influence your behavior at all.

That's useful to notice, too.

The goal doesn't have to be collecting every available piece of information about ourselves. Maybe it's about identifying the information that actually helps us notice something, make a decision or take better care of ourselves.

I still like knowing how much I've moved during the day. What has changed is how I want to receive that information. My phone and Peloton can quietly keep track of much of it without requiring another device on my wrist and, more importantly for me, without every text message, phone call and notification competing for my attention.

Someone else may love wearing an Apple Watch, Fitbit or Oura Ring and find that the immediate feedback genuinely helps them make healthier choices. That's the point. Digital wellness doesn't have to mean tracking everything, and being more intentional about technology doesn't mean rejecting it either.

Maybe it's about deciding what we actually want our technology to do for us, what information deserves our attention and what we're willing to do with that information once we have it.

I didn't stop caring about my steps when I stopped wearing a smartwatch. I simply found a way to keep the information that was useful to me while letting go of some of the noise.

And perhaps that's where digital wellness is heading, too.

The most useful health technology may not be the one that tells us the most about ourselves. It may be the one that helps us live a little differently because of what we've learned.