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A number of doctors aren't so sure about the benefits of wearables eithers. A recent MIT Technology Review story found doctors from a number of specialities unsure about what to do with the data many of their fitness-tracking patients are bringing them."Clinicians can't do a lot with the number of steps you've taken in a day," Neil Sehgal, a senior research scientist at UCSF Center for Digital Health Innovation said. Andrew Trister, an oncologist and researcher at Sage Bionetworks echoed this sentiment. "[Patients] come in with these very large Excel spreadsheets, with all this information," he said. "I have no idea what to do with that."
One of the short-term problems for trackers is that their [sic] not actually reliable enough to be medically useful. The sorts of measurements that devices cheap enough to be commercial products tend only to focus on vague metrics that could just as easily be inferred from a short interview or basic examination. While certain health trackers have shown promise—such as the small implants that manage insulin for diabetics—they can also produce a hyper-vigilance and paranoia, leading to a degenerative process of over-managing issues that a person's body is already handling.
Are there Soylentils that do use fitness trackers regularly? Do they help you manage your health?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 02 2015, @02:00PM
I am not a fan of personal trackers, but your criticism misses the point.
The problem isn't the data. The problem is a lack of tools to analyze it. The companies selling trackers need to step up and put together tools for doctors. They need to do it consultation with both research and real practicing doctors so that the tools are actually fit for purpose.
If they are really smart about it, they will work together to come up with a set of common, open-source tools that work with the data from all of the different brands of trackers. But that's probably asking too much, data silos look so much more profitable to the typical short term thinker calling the shots in big business.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 02 2015, @02:34PM
The more likely outcome will be that each and every vendor will try to rope Doctors into having to pay large sums for analytical software that only analyzes data from it's brand of fitness tracker that they will be locked into using via DRM and won't be able to circumvent thanks to the DMCA provisions.
Then the open source community will find a solution that will work some of the time, but won't be adopted by the medical community because there won't be any turn key solutions and not many want to become Guinea pigs for the open source community in that profession, too much "risk"
(Score: 2) by snick on Wednesday December 02 2015, @03:13PM
Nope. The doctors will get the analytical software for free, and be incented to get _all_ their patients to buy the gizmo that goes with the doctor's software.
Open source won't even be considered because open source doesn't have sales reps.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday December 02 2015, @04:09PM
Which data are useful? Does your doctor really need to know you walked 10,000 steps a day?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday December 02 2015, @04:21PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Nollij on Thursday December 03 2015, @03:35AM
It could be. It isn't necessarily, but there are a number of possibilities.
For instance: You appear to have a condition that only shows up in sedentary people.
Since you have the data to confirm that this isn't the case, he might look into other possibilities.
The problem with this, however, is there is incentive to cheat this system too. My previous employer gave these out free on their wellness plan, with incentives for walking X steps per day.
Most people realize they could just spin it around their fingers. A few hooked them to ceiling fans, etc.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 03 2015, @02:21AM
No, the data is in fact completely worthless. There is no tool that can create signal out of random noise.