Fitness trackers, Smartwatches and Health Data
Contributed By - Hari Gottipati
Your smartphone gathers a ton of data about your self. Depending on the apps you use, and the permissions you have given to these apps, it can tell what places you visited, who you often interact with, from where you post messages on social media, etc. It has all the photos and the AI features in your photo app can even identify and tag the people, objects, and places. But that kind of data is very small compared to what fitness trackers or smartwatches with fitness capabilities are tracking about you. It’s even more personal compared to what your phone is tracking. Just like how the smartphone is a mainstream product, pretty soon wearables with activity tracking capabilities are going to be the mainstream, if not already happening.
A plethora of wearables
There are 500+ devices from 130+ brands available in the market for consumption. The Introduction of new-brands peaked in 2014 and the highest number of the new devices was introduced in 2015. This landscape is changing rapidly, and new brands and devices are getting released every year with improved accuracy and user experience. Also, sensor support is increasing every year. In addition to the accelerometer, Photoplethysmograph, a sensor for estimating heart rate, is a common sensor available in the wearables nowadays.
Sensors are getting better
A set of new sensors combined with algorithms produce human-readable health metrics in a new and improved way. Traditional step counters use cheap and energy efficient pedometers to detect step counts. Pedometers are not as accurate as accelerometers, which is a current standard for collecting PA data. Accelerometers can be used to estimate movement type, count steps, energy expenditure, and intensity, as well as estimating sleep patterns. Some wearables have gyroscopes, used to better estimate the activity by measuring gravitational acceleration; magnetometers, used for motion tracking; and barometers, used to measure changes in altitude to detect hiking, climbed floors, etc. Photoplethysmograph is an optical technique to estimated heart rate by monitoring changes in blood volume under the skin. A light-emitting diode from wearable projects light onto the skin, which is affected by the heart rate and reflected back to the sensor. There are a lot of wearables with heart rate sensors, however, Omron is developing a wearable device that can also monitor blood pressure. An algorithm reads the raw data from sensors and converts into meaningful readable metrics often presented on the wearable or in an accompanying app.
A new Apple Watch Series 4 with an electrical heart sensor
On September 13th, Apple unveiled Apple Watch Series 4 along with iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, and iPhone XR. During the event, Apple announced that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) cleared two new features of Watch Series 4. One is for EKG and the other is for detecting and notifying the user of an irregular heart rhythm. During the event, Apple’s iconic designer Johny Ives said in a prerecorded video that Apple designed an electrical heart sensor. “In addition to an optical heart sensor, there is a new, Apple-designed electrical heart sensor that allows you to take an electrocardiogram, or ECG, to share with your doctor, a momentous achievement for a wearable device. Placing your finger on the digital crown creates a closed circuit with electrodes on the back, providing data that the ECG app uses to analyze your heart rhythm”. Apple Watch series 4 will be available in the US later this year and It takes only 30 seconds for a user to take an ECG.
Tons of sensor data
With all these sensors, activity trackers/smartwatches can push the data in real time to your phone and from there, to the cloud. An average of 10 sensors per wearable and 300 million + units per year (310M in 2017, expected to be 340M in 2018 and 500M in 2021) constantly streaming data every second is going to create massive data sets. Historical data is kept in the cloud to analyze the trends and provide better analytics around your health. On the positive side, it helps you stay on top of your health. On the negative side, lots of your personal data is out there in the cloud. The number of data breaches is on rising and your privacy is at risk. Also, some companies can use this data for targeted ads and other purposes.
Health data, insurance premiums and privacy
John Hancock, one of the largest life insurance providers in North America, requires customers to use activity trackers if they want to get discounts on their life insurance policy premiums. It’s an opt-in program and customers can decide not to share their fitness data, but that will result in higher premiums. Also, there are some pitfalls with this approach - what if you are pregnant or injured, or having a short-term illness and unable to keep up your fitness goals? Will you be penalized with higher premiums whenever you cannot hit the gym? What if the fitness tracker is not accurate? Also, it is not that hard to manipulate these devices to fake the steps count.
The privacy as a concept is rapidly disappearing with sensors equipped in your smartphone, smartwatch and other wearables constantly collecting the personal data and putting in the cloud. When there is an incentive to share the data, people will likely to give up their privacy and I am afraid this becomes a norm in the future.
About the author:
Hari Gottipati is a tech evangelist based out of the Valley. Opinions expressed here are solely his own and do not express the views or opinions of his employer. His quotes can often be found in various technology magazines, GigaOM, CNN Money, WSJ, Bloomberg Business Week, etc. Follow him on Twitter/Facebook/Linkedin@harigottipati.