Wearable devices such as Fitbit and Jawbone have the potential to change healthcare, but the industry is facing challenges on several fronts. Chief among those challenges is protecting the data that wearable devices collect and getting users to commit to them after the novelty has decreased.
Protecting the privacy of the data that wearable devices collect is chief among the industry’s concerns. The use of wearable devices has ballooned over the past few years with the rise of Fitbit and Jawbone, wrist-worn devices that allow users to track their fitness and health by counting steps, calories and more. The data that’s collected ranges from steps and heart rate to medical symptoms and conditions recorded.
Speaking Wednesday at a panel discussion on wearable devices, Michelle De Mooy, deputy director of the Consumer Privacy Project, said the industry isn’t being proactive enough when it comes to data privacy.
“The industry has failed to be real transparent about [data],” she said. “These aren’t little repositories of data.”
She said the companies need to be more transparent in letting users know exactly what data is being collected and how and where it’s being stored.
With their emphasis on personal medical data, wearable devices could especially be vulnerable to hacking. Forty-four percent of data breaches in 2013 targeted medical companies, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center.
“Privacy is always a concern when you’re talking healthcare data,” said Linda Rogers, the only physician on Wednesday’s panel.
Rogers helped develop a mobile app that allows her patients to track and monitor asthma symptoms on their cell phones. The app has about 8,000 users, she said. To protect privacy, the app has de-identified the data it collects to protect users’ personal data.
Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has raised his own concerns over the privacy of products such as Fitbit. The senator has called on the Federal Trade Commission to place stricter privacy restrictions on the wearable devices.
“The fact that private health data — rich enough to identify the user’s gait — is being gathered by applications like Fitbit and can then be sold to third parties without the user’s consent is a true privacy nightmare,” Schumer said in August 2014.
Wearable devices also are struggling to get a commitment from their users. Product advocates argue the products have potential to lower healthcare costs over time, but only if users stick with them.
“People stop using their wearable devices after a short amount of time,” De Mooy said, adding they quit after about two weeks.
All four panelists at Wednesday’s event at the Newseum in Washington emphasized their hope that users commit long-term to wearable devices, noting the benefits they could bring to both patients and the medical industry.
Morgan Reed, executive director at ACT-The App Association, said wearable devices hold the opportunity to empower users by giving them access to their own healthcare information.
Justus Eapen, a software developer with Pavlok, said the growth of wearable technology will only continue to increase, especially as Apple joins the market.
“The most interesting wearable is the Apple Watch,” Eapen said. “It’s going to put this type of technology on everyone’s wrist.”
He sees wearable devices’ biggest potential in their ability to change users’ behavior.
He provided his own device, Pavlok, as an example. The wrist-worn device allows the user to shock him or herself to help break bad habits.
“It doesn’t just track behavior, but changes behavior,” Eapen said of his device.
The use of wearable devices could be a boon to the medical industry. According to a March report published by Intel, wearable devices could cut $63 billion in healthcare costs over the next 15 years. The report also notes that wearable devices could cut 15-30 percent in medical equipment costs. It reasons that wearable devices, as they innovate, hold the promise to provide cost-effective personal health monitoring and self-treatment.
The decrease in medical spending, advocates believe, could come from wearable devices’ patient-centric emphasis. The panelists noted that emphasis would change the medical landscape, allowing patients to rely more on themselves and less on physicians.
“Wearables really turn [the medical] dynamic,” Eapen said.
