SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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, @02:08PM
Graph the data on a time series?
Perhaps even attempt some correlation here and there?
I know they are doctors, but they can ask their nurses to help them put something together after they finish their shoelace tying practice.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by snick on Wednesday December 02 2015, @02:27PM
Would require years of data to be useful. Even then, the information would be "he seems to be slowing down" or some other vague trend. Any abrupt change could easily be identified without data tracking.
So, evidently the plural of anecdote _is_ data?
A non-statistician with a spreadsheet is scarier than a software engineer with a screwdriver.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 02 2015, @02:32PM
I was a quant for a decade before transitioning to software development you insensitive clod!
Seriously, doctors are usually attached to a hospital or clinic with analysts who can do something with this stuff. and uniformly collected data points or not anecdotes...they are data.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by snick on Wednesday December 02 2015, @02:52PM
Sure the spreadsheet is data. I was referring to the "attempt some correlation here and there"
Worked out an extra 10 minutes on Monday ... had a heart attack on Tuesday. Well, it is obvious from the data that those 10 minutes were what did you in!
The amount of data needed (about everything going on in your life, not just your exercise) to make useful correlations would be enormous.
I suppose if you tracked your sleep, what and how much you ate (and when), your exact liquid intake, weighed and analyzed your ... waste, measured your stress, as well as your exposure to allergens chemicals and irritants ... better keep track of the ambient temperature and pressure in your environment while you are at it... and noise, don't forget the prolonged exposure to noise. With all that information tracked over a long enough baseline, PLUS your fitbit records, there might be something that data analysis can do. But I'm probably forgetting several important indicators that would also need tracking.