WEARABLES - INSIDABLES - IOT - CONNECTED DEVICES - QUANTIFIEDSELF

Wearables, devices used to sense data and process it into information, are generating quite the buzz in healthcare these days. But down the line, does that buzz come with a sting?

As the number of self-tracking health and fitness tools available to consumers continues to climb, a persistent question has been whether the data they collect might be useful to health researchers. Along with that: Are people who self-track comfortable sharing their data with researchers?

A new, must-read report from San Diego’s California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2), funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, explores these and other questions.

Based on a survey with hundreds of self-trackers, a majority — 57 percent — said one critical assurance they would need before agreeing to make their self-tracked, personal health data available to researchers was that their privacy would be protected. More than 90 percent also said it was important that their data remained anonymous. Respondents said they’d be more comfortable sharing data if they knew it was only going to be used for “public good” research.

One open-ended survey that the report’s researchers posed to self-trackers found that 13 percent of respondents specifically mentioned an aversion to commercial or profit-making use of their data, according to the report. One respondent wrote: “It depends who gets it. Research using these data will be instrumental in the future of personal predictive services, but also for that reason are likely to be exploited by marketers and the politically short-sighted. Thus I would like transparency for who has access to my data.”

A newly published Apple patent application that details ways to improve a wrist-based pedometer could represent another piece of evidence pointing to an iWatch.

The application, “Wrist Pedometer Step Detection,” came out of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office today. This is part of the standard patent process toward issuance. It details ways to improve step detection when someone is wearing a pedometer on a wrist.

In the patent application’s implementation, the pedometer might be able to “automatically determine that the pedometer is being worn on a user’s wrist.”

Pedometers, the application points out, are often attached to a user’s trunk – on the waist or pants or shirt pocket. A commonly used algorithm to measures steps, however, doesn’t work as well when the pedometer is on a wrist, because the arm’s movement can interfere with the measurement of acceleration.

The Oral-B SmartSeries 7000 can do plenty of things that normal toothbrushes can't.

The 7000 is about the same size and weight as any other fancy electric toothbrush, and is compatible with other old Oral-B brush heads.

It's handsome enough, but really: it's a toothbrush, not a fashion statement.

Anyway, as soon as the toothbrush and your phone have forged a connection over Bluetooth, firing up the 7000 will start a countdown to oral cleanliness in the companion smartphone app.

You (or your dentist, if you're the responsible type) can add and tweak those timers as desired, though the default timer will have you scrubbing different areas of your mouth for two minutes.

In case the sheer boredom of brushing your teeth for that long is too much to bear, you can also thumb through a stream of news articles or local weather reports (no, really) to help you hang in there. Turns out, just furiously mashing those bristles into your teeth isn't great either, so the timer will blink red if you're pressing too hard.

more at http://www.engadget.com/2014/02/25/oral-b-bluetoothbrush-smartseries-7000-hands-on/

LAPTOP-HF is designed to investigate a new way to help treat heart failure. Since many heart failure patients are frequently hospitalized and often feel poorly, the hope is that this system may help your doctor adjust your medications before you develop symptoms or require hospitalization.

This is accomplished by measuring pressure in the heart and then each day providing you with your physician’s updated recommended medications and dosages. These may change daily depending on your condition. This is very similar to how diabetics manage their glucose levels. -

See more at: http://www.kumed.com/heart-care/clinical-services/heart-care-clinical-trials/laptop-hf#sthash.EfEC2fvM.dpuf

No one has arms long enough to wear all of the activity-tracking wristbands currently on sale or awaiting release. These devices count your steps, measure your sleep and some even monitor your heart rate.

But do you know how this information immediately applies to your lifestyle, or what you should do with it?

The services behind these trackers need to invest in immediacy by providing useful information, ideally in real time, so we can optimize our wealth of data into action.

Everyone wants to be better, but nobody has a baseline for understanding themselves.

what use is the data without knowing in real time what you, individually, can do to change it?

I’d like to know whether I need to slow down. Am I pushing myself too hard?