Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984
The newest Apple Watch can now flag potential problems with your heartbeat - a feature that's been cleared by the Food and Drug Administration and that Apple is marking as a major achievement. But some doctors said that including heart-monitoring tools in such a popular consumer product could prompt unnecessary anxiety and medical visits.
The company touted its heart-tracking feature as proof that the watch can help people proactively manage their health "The Apple Watch has become the intelligent guardian for your health," Apple Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams, who oversees the development of the Apple Watch, said in the company's presentation of new Apple products this week.
[...] The FDA has cleared Apple's device as a Class II medical device, meaning that it is intended to diagnose or treat a medical condition and poses a minimal risk to use. (Other Class II devices include some powered wheelchairs and pregnancy kits, according to the FDA website.) In its letter to Apple clearing the feature, the FDA listed as a risk factor the potential for mistakenly flagging a problem, prompting unneeded treatment.
Source: https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/What-cardiologists-think-about-the-Apple-Watch-s-13230271.php
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday September 17 2018, @10:16AM
The ultimate privacy is the thoughts in our own heads that we don't write down, but the penultimate privacy is our DNA and medical data. As a technical person I love data, and the more, the better. As a technical person, I know how easy it is for data to be stolen. So I would love to have this kind of data, but I would never in a million years give a company like Apple access to it. I wouldn't give any company access to it.
Even if the company somehow, miraculously, did not skimp on its security, I could never trust them to never hire MBAs. MBAs have no scruples, no integrity whatsoever, and would sell all our most intimate medical data if it meant they could buy that new Porsche. No ironclad contract, no law in the world would prevent them, because they would most likely never be caught. Even if they were, it would be far too late. The second party would already have sold the data on, because that's what they do.
Washington DC delenda est.