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Are fitness trackers the future of healthcare?
Imagine your fitness tracker vibrates on your wrist – but it’s not because you’ve reached your 10,000 steps goal for the day or because you’ve received an email. Instead, your tracker is warning you that your blood pressure is high, your doctor has seen the stats in real-time and they want you to de-stress. Or maybe an analysis of your sweat is showing you’re a little too dehydrated. Or maybe the air around you is full of allergens and could set off your asthma.
The sensors within our fitness trackers have improved greatly in recent years. We now have more accurate heart rate monitors, accelerometers to detect the smallest changes in movement and positioning, and even ECG sensors in devices like the Apple Watch, Samsung Galaxy Watch Active 2 and Amazfit Verge 2 to flag up issues with our hearts.
But many experts believe this is just the beginning and soon our fitness trackers will be packed with an even wider range of sensors to collect data that could, potentially, save our lives, diagnose illnesses and keep our doctors constantly updated.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by lentilla on Thursday October 03 2019, @05:32AM (3 children)
As if! More realistically: your insurance company's AI has seen the stats and has raised your premiums.
Potentially; true; but the reality is that the information will be used against those who wear the sensors. Also, there is very unlikely to be a real flesh-and-blood doctor in the loop. The information will all disappear into an unfathomable black box; never to be seen again (until the data is exfiltrated in yet-another cyber-attack).
Yes, humanity has great potential to help each other with the judicious use of technology but the sad reality is that is will be used primarily to control the populace and to squeeze an extra dime to send back to old Uncle Scrooge. The future is not looking rosy.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday October 03 2019, @01:21PM (2 children)
Most realistically, your boss gets put on report himself, if he doesn't raise your workplace stress level to some return on investment maxima designed to get the most profit out of employees before they burn out.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Thursday October 03 2019, @11:38PM (1 child)
Or which employees are nearing end of biological capacity to perform.
So he can replace them before they fail on the job.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 05 2019, @01:09AM
Ah, a new meaning for preventative maintenance, I like it!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by aristarchus on Thursday October 03 2019, @05:43AM (4 children)
The answer is "no". No further comments necessary, unless SoylentNews has begun to sell things, like its soul!!!
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday October 03 2019, @08:11AM (2 children)
However, in the same way that that old tech changed a fair bit before widespread adoption, there's a good chance that these modern devices will too (compare how they measured blood pressure in the 1700s, it's pretty crude). When I see a device called "Amazfit" anything, the first thing that goes through my head is "that exists purely to track me for the benefit of advertisers or government agencies who I don't want to have access to that information". If such paranoia and big-tech mustrust catches on, perhaps there will be an international law that forces all medical hardware to not have any features not necessary for its medical function, and also to be open source, so that such claims can be verified by anyone. And once there's no mistrust in these things (I'm sure "you're not sticking that up my butt" stopped the thermometer from catching on too), there's no reason not to use them if they have some benefit, even if small, if the cost/overhead isn't great, and given that they're small and cheap now, they'll only get smaller and cheaper.
Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Thursday October 03 2019, @08:25AM (1 child)
I don't know about that mushtrust, but a healthy bit of paranoia never caused any harm.
Now, about that 'healthy bit of paranoia': nope, you can't.track it, you'll only raise it at unhealthy levels if you try. A clear case of measurement affecting the measured.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Touché) by ewk on Thursday October 03 2019, @09:27AM
Besides... even if you're not paranoid, it does not mean they are not out to get you after all.... :-)
I don't always react, but when I do, I do it on SoylentNews
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Thursday October 03 2019, @08:40AM
Ummm... lemme play the devil's advocate, magister.
Why do you see as wrong in commercial operations involving souls? After all, God let the people own a soul and have free will, why do you object to private contracts affecting nobody else but the contracting parties?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 03 2019, @06:28AM (2 children)
Today doctors work like slaves in a galley - in ER they work 24 hour shifts, in clinics they work 8-10 hours like on a conveyor (nurses bring the patients in, the doctor jumps from one exam room to the next every five minutes.) They have no leisure time to receive single readings, especially not knowing what is the cause. Each doctor has hundreds of active patients and thousands of inactive ones - just look at the shelves in any medical office.
Usually the patient is tasked with buying a wrist device and measuring BP periodically - doctors invented parallel processing much earlier than computer scientists :-) If necessary, the patient will contact the doctor and get a recommendation. Patients with serious problems are using a certified medical service that provides the sensors, the Internet-connected hub and, sometimes, the 24/7 team that goes through the events, generate medically significant statistic and calls the patient, his caregivers, the doctor or even 911 depending on what they see.
A watch, however good, is not a medical device and cannot generate reliable data. Take heartbeat for example. Watches detect changes in absorption of light within the skin. This method depends on how close to the skin the watch is worn - and you cannot tighten the strap too much because the skin will not like it , and you develop skin rash, if not worse. A loose watch will provide noisy results or no results. A professional device will use glued pads that receive the pulse electrically [nih.gov], and if necessary they can have multiple channels (the watch has only one.)
A watch is still useful, of course. I have an Active2 now and use it for daily monitoring. I do not need to report these numbers to anyone because they are to quantify training, not treatment. But I'm not sure if an easy to use device, like a watch, can be dependable enough to give it to a heart patient who can die if the readings are not exact. And yes, there are legal issues here as well, and the FDA certification. Medical device companies [mddionline.com] design for FDA requirements; Apple or Fitbit or Samsung may design for looks and ease of use. The ECG pad in Active2 is not only not certified yet, the company isn't even willing to enable it as a second pulse source.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 03 2019, @09:04AM
Doctors aren't going to look at the readings. Big AI will.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 05 2019, @01:17AM
> doctors work like slaves in a galley - in ER they work 24 hour shifts
And why is this true? Something about the AMA limiting medical school class sizes? As people learn more about our health (information on the internet is part of this--for better or worse), the mystery and exclusivity of the medical profession is quickly waning.
(Score: 2) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Thursday October 03 2019, @06:33AM
Are Trackers the Future of Everything?
Once I can 3d print 1000 nanobots with rfid, or worse a/v transmission, which can fly and embed themselves in your scalp, and I can plant receivers whereever I want which cheaply upload whatever 5g plc data made to look like a washing machine shopping for detergent, it's going to be pretty easy for stalkers to stalk the living shit out of people and the government to make a real time map of every single person.
And no one is going to tell you this is out there, you will learn about it 5 years later, or never.
I suspect under these conditions governments, capitalist elites and fanatical cults will get very good at deterrmining who should never be allowed to talk on mass media, and then making that a reality.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 03 2019, @07:11AM
Slave trackers.
(Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Thursday October 03 2019, @10:35AM
So in other words another worthless gadget that you will be REQUIRED to buy and upgrade every year, polluting the planet and making the Chinese richer, because 1984-ish nazi-esq tracking is "good fo you".
(Score: 3, Interesting) by esperto123 on Thursday October 03 2019, @12:13PM (1 child)
Probably not.
I once heard a doctor saying that too much information may be worse than too little, it can lead to unnecessary procedures that themselves have risks and can worsen outcomes.
The thing is that nobody has studied humans 24/7, take heart rate for example, let's say that you have a sudden peak in bpm or that the ECG sensor sees a irregular beat, we don't know if that is actually bad (not considering a false reading) because we pretty much never did a study that follows 24/7 for long periods of time the heart rate of vast numbers of healthy people to how common this is.
The doctor actually cited an example of high risk pregnancies near term, were the baby's heart beat was continuously monitored, and a study showed that this caused the doctors to intervene at any sign of a irregularity, while babies in the same situation but not monitored so close would not get this intervention and, on average, the not monitored babies had a better outcome.
That's the big conundrum of big data, you have to filter what is important, if you can't you will just drawn in information and likely make wrong decisions.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Farkus888 on Thursday October 03 2019, @02:27PM
Not saying I support this level of spying, but... The canned answer to your point from supporters is, we just need more data to be able to know better when intervention is necessary. The sooner we can go the spying the sooner it works.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday October 03 2019, @03:02PM
Q. Is fast food the future of fine dining?
A. No. Ordinary sane people would never frequent these fast food joints enough for any of them, let alone multiple of them to be successful. So, the answer is no.
Maybe fitness trackers for the uninsured. Along with walk up windows to pick up standard drug ration packets to keep them
satiatedtreated and in 'good' 'health'.To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Thursday October 03 2019, @11:49PM
You might like this:
https://m.apkpure.com/heart-rate-monitor/com.repsi.heartrate [apkpure.com]
It uses your light and camera to function as a photoplethysograph.
And shows your heart activity like a pulse oximeter. Great for seeing arrythmias... Things like atrial fibrillation or premature ventricular contractions.
You know... Look for a clean rhythm, if it looks screwball to you, show it to your doctor.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]