Anecdotally, the heart rate data they have isn't very good. I had a Fitbit to track my HR while running, and the HR reading would change dramatically based on what I set my stride length to in the app. I would run on the treadmill, and it would guess how much I ran. If my stride length was set to a longer length, it thought I was an elite athlete and told me my resting HR was sub 50 BPM. If I set a normal stride length, my resting HR would be 60+. That's when I stopped caring about health trackers.
Guess what the digital bathroom scales are just as bad when it comes to body fat measurements, and even worse when it comes to weight measurements.
(The algorithm that shows your weight has hysteresis built in, so that if you step on, get a reading and step off, then step back on with a 1- or 2-lb weight, it will give you EXACTLY the same reading. This is to fool you into thinking its accurate)
For me, doing hill sprints on a bicycle sometimes completely fails to register on the Fitbit. My heart rate will sometimes show up in the 90-100 range on the Fitbit, despite my Garmin (which gets data from a chest strap monitor) showing me 160-170, which is far more believable.
And then there are weird situations while merely walking around where I'll see strange spikes (160+) on the Fitbit when I know my heart rate is near 90 or so.
I've seen the same thing. I'm a middle aged guy, endurance athlete, was competitive nationally at the NCAA level way-back-when. I learned a lot about nutrition and physiology as part of my sport.
Back then the conventional wisdom (not universally accepted) was that max heart rate was "220 minus age". Well, if you do that math on me, the peak -- not sustained -- rate that I reach now is outrageous, in a good way. Granted, I've learned to push through and perform at high levels of exertion and exhaustion, it didn't happen from one day to the next.
Anyway, there were times ~3 years ago where I'd be tearing up a workout, Fitbit would read 130, I knew it was f*Ing wrong. Bought a chest strap and saw what was really going on. Low 190s. Thanks FitBit!! I would have been happier if the FitBit just put up "??? WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING OLD MAN???"
I have a Versa. I have the feeling for casual daily activity or light exercises (hiking, walking around) it's OK. The resting heart rate also seems to be mostly accurate for me.
However for more intensive activities it seem like it can't keep up. I guess either because of sweat, or because of delays during processing. When I went biking with it and going full-out, the heart rate stayed really low for minutes, until it went somewhere in the medium range (still lower than it actually was). When doing something short and intense like burpees, it might even keep displaying the low starting heart rate, even though the actual heart rate is on the highest side. My garmin with chest strap does a way better job for these kind of activities.
However in total I still like the Versa and would buy it again.
Not too many people seem to care on the reading end, so I guess that's fine.
As another user (kaustyap) posted further below:
> It kind of sounds like marketing pitch by fitbit to let potential clients in health industry know that they have so much of data to sell.
Sounds right to me -- it's a marketing ploy.
In an academic or industrial setting, the data might still be useful, but it would have to get re-crunched with many, many more controls, plus sample corrections, cross-validation against other data, etc. -- than what the linked article does.
>The scientists note that Qatar seems to be an outlier. Seventy percent of the Qatari population is obese — yet their RHR is an impressive 62. How could that be?
Might be because the obese Qatari aren't the Qataris buying fitbits?
Also Qatar is probably a bit of an outlier in that 88% of the population are foreign workers [0,1]. Maybe the 70% obese stat includes only Qatari nationals while the resting heart rate includes everyone.
While I am a privacy advocate in most aspects, I fail to see how my basic health data like HR, weight etc is going to be used against me except for bad marketing practices.
If I talk ill about some political ideologies and that gets stored until some evil dictator gets in power, that I can get. But who is going to put me in prison for having a high heart rate?
The benefits in the other hand is great. I get to see and view my health improve or get worse over time and they can use my data along with many others to get patterns and help improve the health of everyone.
I guess what I am saying is that I don't really get the panic about giving up health data that is displayed in this comment section. I also own a Withings / Nokia watch together with a scale and it works great, have motivated me to get more sleep and exercise more. My experience is purely positive and I am quite certain that owning devices like this helps a lot of people get more healthy, detect bad trends etc.
One problem facing insurance companies is the asymmetric information between buyer and seller. Should we be able to keep our age secret when buying life insurance? How about sex or weight?
My teenage son is in all likelihood a less safe driver than the average teenage woman, should a woman pay the same for her insurance as the generally more reckless man?
With regard to our health information, should we be keeping information from our insurance companies? Would it be right to lie about it? If not then should we hiding it. It seems that in this case we are taking advantage of others that will inevitable have to pay higher premiums to cover costs of those that are less honest about their health.
I bought a house recently. The owner didn’t disclose a crack in the slab. They had covered it with a recent floor covering that fooled both me and the inspector. Is that okay? Isn’t this similar to trying to keep a life insuance company from realizing that one has a significant risk say of a heart attack?
I don’t like companies collecting data on me, so if Fitbit does this I would hope that there was a way to opt out; nevertheless, I feel that we shouldn’t expect private insurance companies to charge us all the same. This leaves many people in circumstances where insuance would be unobtainable—a big problem where government could play an important role in a just solution.
I'm not disputing any statistics. I'm saying, if it's okay to discriminate based on age and gender (because of stats) then why is it not okay to do the exact same thing with race?
Seems to me like one should pay more for risky things one can control (still smoking, excessive drinking, eating poorly if you can afford to eat well, etc.) but not for things one cannot control (genetics, sex -- insert typical list of protected classes here). And that is super complicated.
Super complicated. For an insurance company collecting verifiable data on things people can control is way harder then collecting data on things they cannot.
If everyone wasn't so incredibly uptight about paying a tiny bit more than their fair share all this would be a lot easier. Would it be so awful if we all had to pay a little extra so that a smoker could afford life assurance, or so a young man could afford to insure a car?
Whether our data is going to an evil dictator or a saint is not the first question. The first question is, do we know where it is going? Were we explicitly told, did we knowingly and willingly give permission (not tricked, as a footnote in 8 point font in a 50 page terms and conditions agreement) to use our data - that should be our first question. If that is not satisfactorily answered (not just this case), then the rest of the questions don't matter as much.
Even if the data collector's intentions are 100% pure (it never is) and it is used for the good of humanity (it never is) etc etc, it is still extremely offensive to take someone's most intimate data without them knowing and explicitly authorizing to do so. Even after that, there should be periodic independent audits just to make sure the data collectors hold their end of the bargain.
> and they can use my data along with many others to get patterns and help improve the health of everyone.
Are they actually doing it? How?
I'm a big fan of Datensparsamkeit[0]. Either they actually use this data to further medical research (which is something that would be marketed loudly), or there is no basis to assume they maybe, at some point, could - possibly - do it. Beyond that, I see no valid reason why this data should ever leave my local watch<->phone network. All fitness-related functionality can be performed off-line. And guess what, when done off-line, you're not screwed if your hardware outlives the vendor.
> fail to see how my basic health data like HR, weight etc is going to be used against me except for bad marketing practices.
I actually looked into this in some (limited) detail, although for a slightly expanded definition of all data a Fitbit (and the near future similar devices) could collect.
Heart rate data has been used in legal cases in the past. In an insurance fraud case, heart rate data from a pacemaker was used to provide evidence the events could not have occurred as described [1]. Similarly activity data has been used to defend against a false rape claim [2]. There is no reason such data could not be used in any other legal case.
The data collected by such devices can also reveal much more information about yourself than most think. By watching hand movements via accelerometer, smokers can be identified with 95% accuracy [3]. Users can be tracked via Bluetooth identifiers, or via the unique walking pattern of each individual [4]. Even when encrypted, users can be identified by the frequency of communication to the smartphone. Furthermore, pins can be identified by monitoring users hand motion via accelerometer [5]. For more advanced next generation fitness trackers tracking your ECG, this has been shown to be as unique as a fingerprint, allowing individuals to be uniquely identified across devices [6].
There is no reason that this data could not be used against you via insurance companies to change insurance costs (smoker, type of transport, heart health, activity) or even force you to wear one much like some car insurance requires black box monitoring. You could be taken in for insurance fraud by saying you are not a smoker, or it could potentially be used against you in court. This data can also be falsified, meaning fake data could potentially be used against you.
In summary, there are many other privacy problems with fitness trackers.
And let's not forget what happens when a fitness tracking company has a data leak, someone plots it on a map, and suddenly military bases pop up like sore thumbs...
[1] and [2] sounds kind of positive rather than negative though.
Maybe smokers ought to pay more for their insurance? I'm not saying it's great that they can track people who smoke but the data could as well be used to strengthen your case, isn't that right?
I get it if you are an US-citizen and don't want to use fitness tracker that sends data to their servers but I am a Swedish citizen. I don't have a health insurance so I don't have to worry about any insurance company finding out anything about my health.
Maybe there are privacy concerns and maybe they should be addressed, but there is also most likely a lot of benefit to be gained from these systems. Just because the US has a crappy health system that exploits tech like health trackers doesn't mean that the health tracker stuff is inherently bad. Since I live in EU, I can also require them to delete the data thanks to GDPR.
TL;DR: I get the worry you may have as an US citizen, but basically none of these concerns seem to apply to a EU citizen that have universal health care.
I agree, although I'm lucky enough to live in a country where healthcare is universal and not at the whim of an insurance company. I presume this is the situation for you too?
Yes, that is the situation for me too. I guess if my healthcare was depending on my insurence getting through I would be more careful with that data but I don't think they would be able to identify me.
I actually think the reverse could be true. If you own a watch, a scale etc you are obviously thinking about your health and prioritizing it. It makes little sense to punish people who prioritize their health and monitor it to evade bad stuff.
If I notice a bad trend I would do something about it, if it was my heart rate I would probably call a doctor and usually with health the earlier you identify an issue the more likely it will be easier to do something about it.
If you go with a bad heart for years it will probably be harder to get healthy after that and will probably be more expensive as you might require a surgery which perhaps could be avoided.
Well, you kind of are but not in terms of money but rather with increased knowledge of patterns which should be avoided. They can tell you how to get healthier, identify the optimal sleep and exercise patterns, identify if certain places causes people to be more healthy/unhealthy etc.
Companies will most likely use this information as selling points for their devices / apps. I value this information much higher than a small amount of money.
They missed the sampling effect across ages. I've seen it in action quite a few times already. Prior: Conditional on Having a fitbit, the 70 yr old is a larger deviant from average health, than the 30 yr old. That effect could easily explain away the falling RHR with older age. The population in that age group is getting more healthy by self-sampling. The proposed solution in the article (the use of beta-blockers) seems inadequate. What proportion of the population and the Fitbit-users is on those medicines? (Article does mention some stats in the multicountry comparison.)
As always the bayesian/multilevel approach could help: buying a Fitbit is a decision with information on your health-status in itself, model it likewise. Add information on weigth, BMI, activities per week etc. as indicators of in which class of users you fall (the uberfit, healthy, the aspiring, ...). Then use the predicted RHR per age instead of the data itself.
A low (R)HR isn't always indicative of good health. High blood pressure can cause your HR to drop, for instance.
I hope they're actively researching their data set, I suspect we can learn a lot from it. They might even be able to detect certain arrhythmias, though that can't be easy with just an optical sensor which only reads HR.
With a user base this large, I'm sure people have died while wearing their fitbit. Maybe they could help predict/prevent the sudden cardiac death syndrome that many young athletes are afraid of?
While you are correct, it’s not normally seen as an indicator of high blood pressure. The larger concern would be an arrhythmia or a form of heart block. These are definitely dangerous, but usually concern is only raised if symptomatic or the heart rate is below 50. Even in this case, a heart rate below 50 can be normal in very athletic people.
Oh yes, you're absolute right. I'm not saying that a a HR below 60 is abnormal or bad. I'm just saying that "low = good" isn't automatically true. AFAIK devices like fitbit have no indication of blood pressure (or heart block or certain kinds of arrhythmias), so they can't really make this bold claim.
Wasn't someone working on a step-on scale which (somehow?) looked at blood flow in your feet and tracked this over time? Something like that might be able to detect plaque buildup over time. Not sure how accurate this would be, or how exactly this would work.
I really wish scientist would stop “just sayin’” things like this. With all this value in data and possible contributions to the understanding of our vascular system, I find it quite dangerous to counter that with the suggestion that drinking alcohol is a healthy option to reduce stress.
I don't think anyone was implying that alcohol was a healthy stress reducing option. I assume they were referring to the oft cited myth that red wine has cardiovascular benefits.
Yes, there are cases when a sub-60 resting heart rate is bad. For the vast majority of people, lower is better. The athlete's heart undergoes remodeling that is similar in outcome to pathological processes (eg, cardiomegaly and cardiac hypertrophy), but is in fact healthy, not harmful.
I have personally found that average RHR per week tends to correlate strongly with my own physical activity. With consistent workouts, I can get down to 47 bpm. When my RHR gets above 55, I know I've been slacking off for too long (or it's an exam week and I'm stressed).
I have personally found that average RHR per week tends to correlate strongly with my own physical activity.
Weird, my morning RHR has consistently been 54bpm since I was eighteen years old, whether training for an ultra marathon, high-level bicycle racing, or sitting around being a (relatively) fat slob for a period of time. So consistent, that now in my 50s I just don't bother paying attention anymore.
Young adult. It takes about 1-2 weeks to notice a trend. I'm just looking over my summer RHR data and it pretty much matches my activity level. Steady decline in May and June when I was working out consistently. Steady climb after I injured my knee and had to lay off a bit. Decline when I got back on the exercise horse. Incline towards the end of the summer when workouts became rare due to wrapping up projects and traveling.
On a good week, I'll do 1-2 hours of cardio 5x a week, maybe with some HIIT thrown in. On a bad week I'll do nothing.
It kind of sounds like marketing pitch by fitbit to let potential clients in health industry know that they have so much of data to sell. Otherwise It seems odd for fitbit to share this information with the author.
I wonder what they mean by "optimal", which this article seems to be mentioning a lot.
It seems that they are referring to a maximum or a minimum in the curve, and calling it optimal. It seems to offer the hypothesis that a low resting heart rate (RHR) is good, and then runs with it. It does not explain how it arrived at that conclusion.
It feels that they saw that most people at a given age have a resting heart rate of X and therefore they conclude that this is optimal. However, I wonder if people with a lower-than-average or higher-than-average have a longer life expectancy. I understand that FitBit data would not show that, as the age-at-death seems to be one of the few data points they don't have :).
Are there any relatively dumb trackers that can log only locally or to Apple Health without aggregating my data or storing in the cloud? I’d like to replace a Charge HR and have some activity tracking and real time heart rate.
I have to wonder about the "findings" regarding sleep of 7 hours being a causation for a lower RHR. Could it be that the cohort of those who are getting up early to exercise regularly are trading an hour of sleep in order to do so? To assume that "too much sleep is bad for you" seems incorrect given just the aggregate of all data with so many other variables.
We are actively working very hard on this! Unfortunately it’s the typical tech story — the system that worked well over 10 years ago isn’t working as well today and it’s a big project to replace it. We have a whole team of very experienced engineers who are working to improve it for all our devices.
Am a Garmin user for years. Was in a hospital ~10 months ago and was connected to a heart-rate-monitoring-thingy via a finger-clip. At the same time I had my Garmin Fenix 3 on my other arm. Was looking at the screen and comparing it to what my watch was showing and it was +-2 points at all times. Tried holding my breath to see what happens and both were almost identical.
My experience of hospital grade equipment for monitoring the heart is that it isn’t great with movement either. This was in an MR scanner (magnetic field and RF) so I ones milage may vary.
I did something similar during a cardiac stress test, with a Fitbit Versa. My best conclusion was that the Fitbit is at least +/-5 BPM off and it lagged behind the hospital equipment by roughly 15 seconds (judging by heart rate peaks).
Is that really a problem with the equipment though?
They explain exactly this in the booklet it comes with.
If a sphygmomanometer gives an inaccurate reading because the doctor doesn't put the cuff on properly is the machine to blame?
I only say this because I've tested both a fitbit, and a garmin on each arm while wearing a chest strap and found both results to be within a satisfactory deviation of the chest strap.
Yesterday, my fitbit shows me I had walked 800 steps - I wasn't wearing it and it was just lying there on my desk. Bought it last Christmas, so it is not even a year old.
That’s really odd. I can’t talk about accuracy, but getting steps while it’s literally sitting on a desk would be novel in my experience. Do you have mobile track enabled (the feature where we can use the phone’s accelerometer to try and record steps)?
You should also try reaching out to customer support, we invest very heavily in being able to debug it when things go weird.
I am not sure if mobile track is enabled, but it shouldn't matter because my phone wasn't moving either. Both were on the desk, till evening. After work (I work from home and I only use the watch when I step out), I stepped out and was surprised to see it was showing ~800 steps. It was a bit amusing!
> modern smartwatches and fitness bands can track your pulse continuously, day and night, for months. Imagine what you could learn if you collected all that data from tens of millions of people!
Please no. Surely nobody thought collecting health data from all their users was a good idea, right?
> That’s exactly what Fitbit (FIT) has done. It has now logged 150 billion hours’ worth of heart-rate data. From tens of millions of people, all over the world.
Argh…
> Fitbit also knows these people’s ages, sexes, locations, heights, weights, activity levels, and sleep patterns.
Just stop it already.
> Before you freak out: Fitbit’s data is anonymized. Your name is stripped off, and your data is thrown into a huge pool with everybody else’s. (Note, too, that this data comes only from people who own Fitbits — who are affluent enough, and health-conscious enough, to make that purchase. It’s not the whole world.)
"Anonymized". Just with the data posted above, it seems like it'd be pretty easy to correlate the data to a person. And auto-enrolling everyone who buys a health product is not an excuse to mine all their data.
That is a correct logical conclusion if you start with the assumption that the data shared with David Pogue included all the data Fitbit has. But maybe you shouldn't start with that assumption.
Disclaimer: I work for Fitbit, but don't speak for Fitbit.
EDIT: Actually there's an additional assumption here, one which I also make, that any app with location permissions has all my GPS location data. But that assumption may be false here. It sounds like where I'm sleeping at 3am isn't recorded according to https://help.fitbit.com/articles/en_US/Help_article/2134
This large scale data analytics is probable the best (or at least usually fastest) way to solve the worlds big health challenges I would guess. Nobody forced anyone to wear a smart watch or health tracker. I for one thinks the world is slightly better off because of companies like Fitbit!
> Nobody forced anyone to wear a smart watch or health tracker.
I think this is a dangerous mindset to have, assuming that just because someone's bought a product, that gives the manufacturer license to collect data on my health habits. I would be much more receptive to an opt-in study.
* Nobody forced anyone to wear a smart watch or health tracker.*
Yes... and no. Don't folks get insurance premium discounts for using one of these things? If you are poor and having trouble putting food on the table, it isn't much of an actual choice.
If used by researchers, for research. Not sitting in vaults of private companies, doing God knows what. I don't even know what they need that data for.
Sure, now that's there, it could be useful. But why can't we ever go about collecting such data the right way? Opt-in, and for the right purpose?
Sure, but that's application. Great things usually can do terrible things depending on application.
At some point we have to take a leap of faith and acknowledge that some things, like heart data ingestion, is an amazing advancement for humanity. Lets not try and stop it, lets try to move it in the right direction. Ie, not private, etc.
> This large scale data analytics is probable the best (or at least usually fastest) way to solve the worlds big health challenges I would guess.
Judging from previous performance of using statistical analysis to study health, I don't see it solving anything major.
Health is mostly a combinations of genetics and healthy routines.
People already have a good idea of how they could improve their routines/diets--they choose not to. Healthy routines are hard. So unless the massive data sets are related to genetics, I don't see them contributing much.
Both right? You may not like it but which research wouldn’t benefit from a large useful dataset? And to the post above re: assuming consent, sure maybe they should make it crystal clear up front how they’ll use your data.
A list of information shared would go a long way. Assuming it's a short list (hah), it wouldn't be hard to prominently display it aside from the privacy policy.
While I definitely agree that there are large privacy concerns when collecting health related data, I disagree with the sentiment that it's always a bad idea. There is a huge net benefit to modernizing medicine and getting to an AI that is more accurate then doctors. Creating those datasets is a leap towards that direction.
If they want true anonymity, then remove at least location part of this (or say with 50km precision). Make it all optional with clear description what user opt for. And have independent yearly audit that confirms this on their core databases.
Anything less that that, and their motives are dirty as stale sewage waters. Why it seems that every company out there is only after as-much-data-as-possible from our lives, ideally all lives on the planet, to somehow monetize them in future? And ideally get bought by some big corp for few billions for owners.
Yet another useless thing I am happy to pass (and I am fitness nerd, but never saw any appeal in these measuring devices - work out hard, have fun, keep doing it often and you will be exceptionally healthy)
It's not a bad idea if done the right way. Like, I am informed beforehand that this device is collecting all those data for use in medical research by those particular parties, and here is where I can follow this research.
Because otherwise, that data has no business leaving my personal watch<->phone network.
I don't really care about Fitbit collecting all that data. If you don't want yours to be used, just buy another tracker from the tons out there. Privacy is all about choice, so it's not as bad as i.e. Google using your search data because the room for choice is smaller (at least for me, having tried out DuckDuckGo and others and switching back). Also I'd rather have my data harvested for science and medicine than for selling advertisements or whatnot
> If you don't want yours to be used, just buy another tracker from the tons out there.
I've already done this. But that doesn't mean I can't call out potential privacy violations in other products.
> Also I'd rather have my data harvested for science and medicine than for selling advertisements or whatnot
Can you prove this? Even if Fitbit isn't doing this now, what if they're acquired tomorrow by a company with more relaxed morals on what is permissible to do with health data?
There are no trackers which don't force customers to create an online account and then upload the data. I looked at every possible product last year and the only exception is Apple.
And all the "science and medicine" done by FitBit according to this article has resulted only in confirming things that are already known. I was actually curious what insights they discovered and there are none.
"Fitbit’s data confirms a lot of what cardiologists already know. But because the Fitbit data set is ridiculously huge, it unearthed some surprises, too."
From there the article goes on to list a number of new insights and potential research areas to pursue.
I did, none of the "surprising things" seem like they could result in any medically actionable info. They're more like medical curiosities, while the truly actionable info was already known.
iCloud sync can be turned off completely on any iPhone. Anyway, I believe the health data is encrypted with some device-specific secret, but I'm not 100% sure.
Privacy is also about "herd immunity" - that geotagged photo posted from a party at my place affect my privacy, as does your fitbit tracking data if purchased cell tower data can be collerated to the point of assuming we went hiking together...
Not trying to argue, just pointing out that it's not quite so simple.
I wonder to which extent tracking data is really anonymized since users can still request to delete it, as described in the privacy policy [1].
> If you choose to delete your account, please note that while most of your information will be deleted within 30 days, it may take up to 90 days to delete all of your information, like the data recorded by your Fitbit device and other data stored in our backup systems. This is due to the size and complexity of the systems we use to store data.
I work for Fitbit. I don't speak for Fitbit, but the web page you cited does.
I don't see any claims to anonymize unshared data. I just see "We may share non-personal information that is aggregated or de-identified so that it cannot reasonably be used to identify an individual."
I'm currently thinking about buying a fitness tracker, and this article definitely rules out a Fitbit.
Does anyone know a fitness tracker that does not share my personal health data with anyone?
Apple Watch? There's a heart study you can participate in by sending your heart data, but it's opt in (and you have o be 23). If you don't have an iPhone I'm sure there are a couple heart rate trackers that don't upload to the cloud, but you may have to drop down to a "dumb" device to ensure this.
And then determined that you actually are 80% more likely to have early stage heart disease based on a big data analysis tool, and then sold that information to an insurance company, which correlated it with other data they have (like strava's activity times) to uniquely identify you, and now wants to raise your premiums by 400% because you have a "increased likelihood of a pre-existing condition".
>A health problem, like asthma, diabetes, or cancer, you had before the date that new health coverage starts. Insurance companies can't refuse to cover treatment for your pre-existing condition or charge you more.
In the US at least, insurance companies can charge:
Up to 4x the standard rate, based on age, so that an 18 year old working a minimum wage job has lower premiums than a 55 year old.
Up to 1.5x the standard rate for smokers.
Everyone's nightmare scenario about insurance companies using Fitbit data to screw customers is only possible if the Affordable Care Act is allowed to die.
Everyone else worrying about genetic data should also know that it has been illegal for insurance companies to use genetic data to set rates for years now.
And let's be honest, in 10 years, some of these insurance companies will decide that they want to use this data for this, and will start lobbying, and eventually there will be made exceptions and new bills passed. And while it's not directly possible now, laws change, especially when giant companies stand to make a ton of money if they change
I never actually understood the objection to having people who are putting a greater draw on the insurance system, pay more into it. People who have more accidents also pay higher car insurance premiums. Why shouldn't this be the case for health insurance?
> People who have more accidents also pay higher car insurance premiums. Why shouldn't this be the case for health insurance?
If you have some sort of genetic condition, you're going to have to pay a premium. So while presumably you have some agency over how you drive, with health insurance you may be penalized for something that you have no control over.
Why do you care so much? No one is forcing people to use FitBit. If you don’t agree with their practices or data collection then don’t use their products.
I care because if companies can collect enough data to recognize patterns, and generalize those findings, it becomes everyone's problem. You don't think health insurance providers are dying to buy this data? Or drug manufacturers? You're being double sold and generalized.
For instance maybe insurance rates increase in a region showing a higher percentage of heart palpitations. I live there and now my rates increased even though I don't even own a bitfit.
Was FitBit upfront about this when they sold their products though? I don't actually know the answer and I think that's a critical piece of information.
Do you really think than having less data about human health is better ... because ... privacy?
That goes against any progress that was ever achieved in medicine. Or do you have some way of reconciling that man sticking a finger up another man's rectum is good and private but keeping records of something like a heartrate throughout the day is ... im-private? ... and bad?
Fitbit is not a medical R&D company. It's a fitness gadget vendor. Is all this data used for furthering medical research? If so, by whom? If not, why does Fitbit need it, and what does it do with it?
There is no medical R&D comapny that could run a test that fitbit runs as a sideshow to their business.
So either fitbit gathers this data or noone does. What will it do with the data? I hope it will anonimise it reasonably and puts it up on the internet for free but that's a bit unrealistic. I think it will pass the data to researchers, similar way other companies did in the past. That's beneficial in my book and I much prefer that scenario to the scenario where they just discard the data.
Personally I trust the recently completed[1] Apple/Stanford heart study with my health data a lot more. It's a company with a record of protecting personal data, and on the Stanford side was presumably approved by an IRB before they collected a single piece of data.
Granted it's not the same dataset as you'd get from a "Collect everything and figure out what to do with it later" approach, but I think it strikes a better balance.
For all we know, Fitbit's eventual plan is to sell their heart data to your insurance company so they can say "It looks like you have a higher than average resting heart rate and don't exercise much, we're going to double your premiums." Heck, maybe Fitbit isn't planning that, but they'll go out of business in 20 years and auction your heartrate history to someone else who does that. We have no idea.
Let's assume your worst case scenario. Data is sold directly to insurers.
Unhealthy people pay more (kinda fair don't you think?). Healthy pay less. Some have additional motivation to get healthier, because "screw the old me, I don't care about that looser... but if I move a little I can pay less now? Tell me more!"
Average society healthiness increases. Even worst scenario is great.
> Unhealthy people pay more (kinda fair don't you think?)
Depends. You can be unhealthy through no fault of your own (genetics, environment). From social utility POV, insurance is about pooling risk. Taking your scenario to the limit, if insurance company is able to compute an accurate risk factor for everyone and adjust premiums accordingly, then the risk pool evaporates. But then again, maybe health insurance shouldn't really be a private industry.
Insurance still works even if insurer knows exactly how probable is given outcome and how much exactly will it cost and adjusts the fee to that. People don't insure themselves because it's a good deal. They do it because they know they won't be able to survive financial burden of some rare event that most likely won't happen but they need to be sure that in the case it happens they'll be covered. And they are willling to pay for that.
Risk is still pooled because payouts come from fees of the people that didn't (and won't) experience costly events themselves.
More information just makes the business more just and less random for insurer.
> "Anonymized". Just with the data posted above, it seems like it'd be pretty easy to correlate the data to a person. And auto-enrolling everyone who buys a health product is not an excuse to mine all their data.
Hospitals are allowed to anonymize protected health information in their medical records to mine the data (they can distribute it too) without the patient's consent. PHI is way more protected than consumer health information, which is what Fitbit has.
I'm guessing here, but I'd say hospitals have much more stringent laws they have to adhere. I doubt someone is auditing Fitbit. It's like another commenter said here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17915986
