The Workbench is not a medical device. It does not diagnose, treat, cure or
prevent any condition, and nothing in it should be used to make a medical
decision. If something concerns you about your health, talk to a doctor.
It describes; it does not diagnose
The Workbench will tell you that your resting heart rate has been climbing for
nine days. It will not tell you why, and it will not suggest what condition that
might indicate.
The distinction matters because the honest answer to “why is my resting heart
rate up?” is usually mundane — you slept badly, you are dehydrated, you had a
few drinks, you are coming down with something, it is hot. A system that leapt
to the interesting explanation would be wrong most of the time, and alarming
every time it was.
It does not prescribe
Nothing in the app tells you to take anything, stop anything, or follow any
protocol. Where it suggests, it suggests the sort of thing a sensible friend
would: you have been sleeping short, you have not moved much this week.
It is not finished
You are using pre-release software that changes weekly. Expect:
- Screens that are present but do nothing yet
- Figures that are real but still being calibrated against real bodies
- Occasional bugs, which we would very much like to hear about
The What works, what does not page is an
honest inventory. Read it before you conclude something is broken.
It is not a competitor to your wearable’s own app
Your Oura app, Polar Flow, or Apple’s Health app will sometimes show a different
number to the Workbench for what looks like the same thing. That is expected,
and usually neither is wrong — they are measuring slightly different things, or
scoring the same thing by different published methods.
Where we know about a specific disagreement, we say so on the page for that
device.