Healthcare IT's Achilles' Heel: Sensors 84
Nerval's Lobster writes "Tech publications and pundits alike have crowed about the benefits we're soon to collectively reap from healthcare analytics. In theory, sensors attached to our bodies (and appliances such as the fridge) will send a stream of health-related data — everything from calorie and footstep counts to blood pressure and sleep activity — to the cloud, which will analyze it for insight; doctors and other healthcare professionals will use that data to tailor treatments or advise changes in behavior and diet. But the sensors still leave a lot to be desired: 'smart bracelets' such as Nike's FuelBand and FitBit can prove poor judges of physical activity, and FitBit's associated app still requires you to manually input records of daily food intake (the FuelBand is also a poor judge of lower-body activity, such as running). FDA-approved ingestible sensors are still being researched, and it'd be hard to convince most people that swallowing one is in their best interests. Despite the hype about data's ability to improve peoples' health, we could be a long way from any sort of meaningful consumer technology that truly makes that happen."
Finally. (Score:0, Funny)
It's about time people realize this. And it's not just healthcare IT. It's EVERY field. We are SORELY lacking in sensors and data in ALL areas. What are the fucking electrical engineering doing??? Make some fucking sensors!!! The fact that I, as a programmer, still have to rely on GUIs and text as a primary source of input is evidence that more sensors need to be developed. I don't want to have to rely on data entry from fallible humans.
They should have gone with proven technology (Score:5, Funny)
Instead they went for bluetooth and the damn thing says "enter 0000 in the device" and the damned device is buried 3 cm under the subcutaneous layer of the Gluteus maximus. How am I going to do that?