I really enjoyed this article, man. You made such a good case that as soon as I was done I clicked on your link and will probably buy your same watch, ha! That's such a shame that the heart rate monitor isn't approved in the US. You're totally right that that's evidence that we need innovation in our regulatory structure.
I came back to this great piece after a couple of months because I've been thinking about fitness tracking and how it can help both at the personal, individual level and also feeding into research. Just to explore the trends you're laying out, what if in 5-10 years, the percentage of the population using fitness trackers goes from 20% to 80-90%, and the percentage willing to share their data also increases from 50% to 80-90%? The rate of sharing data could be increased by compensating people for their data. There are already [efforts](https://www.computerworld.com/article/3655950/blockchain-firm-equideum-and-nokia-building-exchange-to-let-patients-sell-healthcare-data.html) underway to do this. It would be a world of ubiquitous, continual clinical trials, benefiting the average person both through health advances and a very low-effort, though probably modest, income opportunity. And this world seems more like a simple extrapolation from current trends than a wild fantasy.
I really enjoyed this article, man. You made such a good case that as soon as I was done I clicked on your link and will probably buy your same watch, ha! That's such a shame that the heart rate monitor isn't approved in the US. You're totally right that that's evidence that we need innovation in our regulatory structure.
I came back to this great piece after a couple of months because I've been thinking about fitness tracking and how it can help both at the personal, individual level and also feeding into research. Just to explore the trends you're laying out, what if in 5-10 years, the percentage of the population using fitness trackers goes from 20% to 80-90%, and the percentage willing to share their data also increases from 50% to 80-90%? The rate of sharing data could be increased by compensating people for their data. There are already [efforts](https://www.computerworld.com/article/3655950/blockchain-firm-equideum-and-nokia-building-exchange-to-let-patients-sell-healthcare-data.html) underway to do this. It would be a world of ubiquitous, continual clinical trials, benefiting the average person both through health advances and a very low-effort, though probably modest, income opportunity. And this world seems more like a simple extrapolation from current trends than a wild fantasy.