So do you use a store card? Google Maps? All these things track you.
And not everyone lives in the US. The rest of the world (including me), benefits for fantastic free social health care so we're not concerned about such things....
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QardioArm Smart Blood Pressure Monitor Now Available in Apple Retail Stores
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So do you use a store card? Google Maps? All these things track you.
And not everyone lives in the US. The rest of the world (including me), benefits for fantastic free social health care so we're not concerned about such things....
exactly. i tried to get my mom to use a withings scale recently and she was having none of it, the usual stuff about "knowing my data" yadda yadda yadda. guess what. its 2015. you use the internet, you use cell phones, you use credit cards. they already know what you buy, when, where and how much of it. they know who you talk to, where you go and when, and how much you spent on it. people need to stop deluding themselves that they can exist in the modern society and not be kept track of at all times. use gmail? they probably know more about you than you do. its disingenuous to think that you're somehow sticking it to the man by denying yourself some benefit from the endless reams of information that is already being captured about you every day you're alive.
That paranoid to the n
Really?! Somehow I don't think so. That fact that you own a multitude of Apple devices, you are a member on this forum and you like you're technology dictates otherwise.
Don't fool yourself because you're not fooling us!
Insurance companies. Unscrupulous employers in at-will-employment jurisdictions who wish to limit absences caused by ill health. Potential employers with the same motivation. It's not as if these things haven't happened before even in the pre-Internet era. This is why health data privacy laws exist (or, at least, how they were promoted).
I appreciate how some young folks are into the "sharing culture" and think it's no problem. As an older middle-aged person, I see some of those young folks get turned down for jobs they've applied for based on what the prospective employer found they put in the "cloud."
I also appreciate that some folks live outside the U.S. and aren't familiar with our health care system. In our system, individuals like independent contractors can find it difficult to get affordable insurance, even post-Obamacare. Small and large businesses alike can be charged very different rates for health insurance based on the demographics of their employees. There are very real monetary incentives for both insurers and employers to get access to individual health data. Just because software says it's "HIPAA Compliant" doesn't mean there's any legal obligation for the company to keep data confidential, because software companies are not health care providers and the privacy rules under the HIPAA act don't apply to them.
Finally, there's no technical reason whatsoever for these data to be put onto proprietary corporate servers. iPhones are perfectly capable of doing all the computations involved, and iPhone data is easily backed up through iTunes keeping it completely local, or through Apple Healthkit which is end-to-end encrypted. Remember, those corporate servers are typically in data farms outside the U.S. (or Europe), where rates are cheaper but U.S. and EU law don't apply. These corporations are small and poorly capitalized, and therefore at risk of bankruptcy or takeover which means your data goes "poof" and your must-have-corporate-cloud device becomes worthless.
In short, there are LOTS of reasons why MANY customers can and should find this business practice objectionable. No tin foil hats, just thoughtful folks who may have a bit more experience.
As much as I'd like one of these just from the technology perspective, I believe that blood pressure measuring remains in the 19th century, and is the most inaccurate medical test used today.
I went to the doctor yesterday, and the tech took my bp. She came up with the top number of 140. I said...nuh uh, that doesn't sound like me. So she retook it. Same cuff, same method. This time the top number was 121. That is the difference between being put on bp meds and being declared healthy.
C'mon, medical community - it's time to find a better method!
I went to the doctor yesterday, and the tech took my bp. She came up with the top number of 140. I said...nuh uh, that doesn't sound like me. So she retook it. Same cuff, same method. This time the top number was 121. That is the difference between being put on bp meds and being declared healthy.
C'mon, medical community - it's time to find a better method!