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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: 2) by looorg on Wednesday December 02 2015, @03:42PM
One of those wrist bands was last years x-mas gift at a friends office. He showed it to me, it could sync to your phone and it had this little app with graphs and stuff telling you how much more you needed to move in that day and such. From what I know most people stopped using them after a month or so, I guess the entertainment value sort of dropped off. The most amusing thing about it was that a lot of people got minor amounts of "physical exercise" very late in the evenings (minor amounts of movement, increased heart beats ...). All kept track of by your watch. There was some laughing and jokes about that. They stopped sharing information with each other after they found that one out.
That said I really don't know what one would do with that data either. Data from just that one person probably won't be that useful. Sure you can see that they exercise, move about a bit or get enough sleep and I guess that is all good but beyond that it really doesn't provide anything useful. You could just ask them for that information (do you get enough sleep and do you exercise?). Perhaps it could be interesting if you had ALL the data gathered from everyone or a very large sample of people. Then you might be able to do something with it. But at the same time people that use these things are going to be people that are already into training and exercise already. Most couch potatoes or average people sort of give it up fairly soon or don't even bother with it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 02 2015, @03:47PM
The data by itself does little.
I personally use it to motivate me.
I can also use it to say 'oh wait if I eat that I go over my goal'.
The graphs are kinda interesting and show me if I need to change anything.
AND once again I am trying to cut sugar out AGAIN. Cola and snacks are just too tempting. Last week was horrible for me. But I am back at it again. Dont break the chain is the biggest part of that. The monitoring helps remind you to not break the chain.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Wednesday December 02 2015, @03:53PM
As noted I think it could work as a motivator for you, or a person that is into fitness and exercise. But from a medical standpoint I don't see what a doctor could use it for in a diagnostic sort of way (he can see you slept for x hours and that you took y steps some day). It just won't tell him that you got the flue, except that you probably start to move less and sleep more - but you could also just be lazy.